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Spice of Life (Confessions of an Herb Collector)

October 26, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

My husband and I once were in the humble position of needing a place to stay. We had two small children, a dog, and two cats. We owed a lot of money and we had just spent a month or two living in the nursery portion of our local church. Church friends opened their home to us right after Thanksgiving, and we gratefully moved in. The hope was that we would soon be back on our feet and in our own home, even if we had to lie to the apartment manager that we didn’t have a dog (and consequently hide her in the garage, but that’s another story).

These generous church friend were very, very, sweet people, but… two blended families and two different world views can strain any good relationship, and they did not believe in celebrating Christmas with heathen decorations. Read: they were not going to bring a tree into their house.

Fortunately, we were out within two weeks, and living in the afore-mentioned apartment with our dog hiding in the garage. We bought a tree and decorated it and our friends didn’t hate us.

These friends were wonderful hosts and we tried to be wonderful guests. I remember thinking I would help with dinner. I don’t remember what I planned on making, but given my cooking skills, it had to be pretty simple. I could have been offering to bake something, which is more likely than offering to cook something. It doesn’t matter: when I opened her cupboard, I found only plain iodized salt and finely ground black pepper.

“Where are your spices?” I asked.

“Spices?” Blank look. “There. You’re looking at them.”

“No, I mean like cinnamon, or sage, or basil or…”

She had plain salt and black pepper.

This past weekend, I was preparing my grocery list. My husband (who is the cook in the house) wants to try out a new recipe. Last week, I emptied the bottle of bay leaves. I knew I needed at least two herbal/spice ingredients: bay leaves and ground coriander.

Something prompted me to check my unruly stash of herbs and spices first. Generally, if I can’t find something, I buy one.

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You can see why I had a “bit” of a problem with the spice collection of my long ago Christian benefactor. My collection takes up an entire cupboard. You can also see why I can’t always find what I am looking for.

I have 36 different herbs and spices in there. I know. I counted them yesterday. 59 different bottles or tins (not counting the weird spice mixtures like “Creole Seasoning” that we picked up somewhere, and excluding all salts and black pepper – coarse and fine ground).

There are multiple jars of celery seed, basil leaves, paprika, smoked paprika, real vanilla, whole cloves, ground cloves, cumin, curry, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, and ginger. The winner is Cream of Tartar: I have four bottles of that (thankfully, it has multiple uses). I also have an unopened jar of bay leaves and a jar of ground coriander (scratched those off of my grocery list).

I did not also inventory, but I know I have: pickling salt, Kosher salt, plain iodized salt, sea salt, and an herbal sea salt mixture my husband loves.

I don’t know why I have a partial bottle of (yuck!) imitation vanilla flavoring.

I don’t keep herbs or spices forever – they lose their flavor. These are all purchased within the past five years or harvested from my garden in that time period. I use most of them, and if I don’t use them, my husband uses them.

I walked down stairs, took this photo and headed back up here. Don looked up from his chair and said, “You took a photo of that mess?”

“Hey, I confess my sins.”

“My wife: the obsessive compulsive herb shopper.”

Yeah, but I had the spice you need for your new recipe, Buddy. And I purchased a new bundle of garlic cloves. So there.

(This is also why I nearly died of shock when my then-ten-year old niece moved in with us and she flavored everything with plain catsup. I like to think we are part of the reason she is now an addicted ‘foodie’.)

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Random Facts and Dad

October 25, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

Today, I was reminded of my father. I dragged my husband to the Annual Clackamette Mineral and Gem Show in Canby (he didn’t exactly resist). My plan was to purchase some really awesome glue for crafts (which I did), but I also love the rocks. And minerals.

They have this auction that goes on all day and ends every 15 minutes, where you can bid on rocks, shells, pieces of glass, and minerals. I was mildly amused to see copper ore for sale – I used to buy copper ore from the neighbor girls when I lived in Ely, Nevada. I think I paid $0.05 per rock for the pretty blue arsenic-laced ore. That was back during Kennecott’s hey-day as a copper producer (and Ely’s Boom! days).

We did not buy any rocks, but we did see several things that reminded me of my dad: fire opals, for one. My dad picked up some raw fire opals for me that I still have in a sealed glass with water. If my memory serves me right, I had just joined the rock club in 4-H in out little town. It was the mid-1960’s and the leader of the club was horrified to have a little girl on his hands. He wanted an all-boy club. He purposely excluded me from meeting announcements and field trips. I was not stupid: I knew what he was doing and cried (literally) to my dad. My dad told me that sometimes life isn’t fair and there are not-nice people we have to deal with (I’m sure he wanted to call the guy an a-hole, but I was too young for that kind of name-calling). The very next weekend (OK, sometime close to that event), my dad picked the fire opals up out of a stream somewhere in the remote mountains on Nevada and gave them to me. It was his way of saying that *he* was proud I liked rocks and he wanted to encourage me to continue to be a rock hound.

I love rocks. That’s a random fact.

I love Hallowe’en. I can’t begin to tell you why. I am a born-again Christian who has been bombarded with how evil Hallowe’en is ever since I first professed my faith. How the Church view Hallowe’en has never altered how *I* see it. I love Hallowe’en. I don’t watch spooky movies; I abhor horror flicks; and I don’t read Stephen King (very much, any way). But I.Love.Hallowe’en. I like the dress-up, the lights, the faux head stones, the mockery of death and scary things, and the history of Samhein. I love haunted houses (real ones, not the shock-culture-startle-you-into-a-heart-attack variety). I have lived in several haunted houses, one which had a particularly evil poltergeist. And I still love Hallowe’en.

I love Christmas more. I go a little bit overboard for Christmas. I even believe in Santa Claus.

I once fell into a cult that despised Christmas and we even had to live with a couple who refused to get a Christmas Tree (because it’s evil). I prayed very hard to find our own place before the first of December because I was damned if I was going to have a Christmas without a tree.

We bought a $40 Noble tree for Christmas that year, even though we couldn’t afford it. That’s how bad I am.

I love Easter even more, but they don’t have enough Easter decorations that don’t involve eggs. Eggs only go so far. I can only eat so many eggs and the only other person who lives here doesn’t like hard boiled eggs. Neither one of us does candy or milk chocolate. But – if I could find more bunnies & Resurrection symbols, I’d be in Heaven. Literally.

I can’t sit still. I’m not ADHD, but I have a hard time sitting still for long periods of time. I have to get up and move around every fifteen minutes.

I love storms. I love lightning, wind, and heavy rain (just not constant, steady, drizzle for 6 months). I have been caught outdoors in lightning storms. I’ve had thunder boom overhead so close that the hair on the back of my arms raised up. I’ve been caught in dustdevils that tossed Russian thistle into me so hard that I hurt all over. I’ve huddled under nickle-sized hail while lightning struck everywhere around us (twice!). I still love storms.

I never really wanted to be a mother. At least, not when I was 16. I made this pact with my then-best-friend, Janet, that she could have babies & I could take the kids when they were 4 and raise them. I’ve always liked 4-11 year old kids. Janet didn’t keep her end of the bargain (she had babies, but didn’t ship them to me when they were four). I became a mother and had to raise children under the age of four to adulthood. I loved every minute of it (when I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown).

I love books. OK, that’s not a revelation by any means. I cried when I read my dad’s will and he left ALL the books to me. No one else cared, really. But I knew – at that very moment – that my dad really did get me. He knew me.

I didn’t feel guilty when I took three rocks out of his backyard, under the nose of my nephew. I took two lava bombs and one granite net anchor. I gave one lava bomb to my brother, but the net anchor and the other bomb came home with me. If I had had more time, I would have dug up the petrified wood, too.

My dad was a Forest Ranger. I grew up listening to the Smokey-the-Bear song every time a certain substitute teacher taught my class. I died within every time. But because I grew up believing the USFS land was my land, I refuse to pay for permits to park my car, hike trails, pick huckleberries or mushrooms, or to camp in a designated camp site. I camp where there’s a fire ring & I obey fire danger signs. But those lands are my lands, not the Fed’s lands.

My mother worked for the BLM. We called it “Blum”. She worked for “the enemy”. It was a family joke, but the truth was: we disrespected the BLM.

My dad discovered the Cave Bear skeleton in Nevada. Well, spelunkers who were friends of his actually discovered it. My dad and my mom sat in lawn chairs and watched the excavation. The cave bear skeleton was credited to some young female Forest Ranger fresh out of college. My family remains bitter to this day.

My dad built all of the nice signs that are posted at Great Basin National Park. The Park Service never recognized Dad’s contributions. The last time I took a tour of Lehman Caves, I wrote a scathing letter to the Park Service regarding how they handled the tours. I never heard back from them.

I am a bit of a Forest Service Brat.

Final fact: there was this ceramic frog that lazed under the China Hutch when I was growing up. I remember my dad telling us that when he died, he was going to be reincarnated as that frog. Today, at the rock show, I saw some green carved frogs (that looked nothing like my dad’s frog) and I was reminded of him. His frog is in a box in Reno, in a storage unit. My name is on the box. I had a sudden epiphany.

Dad is waiting for me to bring him home.

I need to get my stuff out of Reno. Soon. Before Dad starts haunting me.

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October 21

October 21, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

Has it really been almost 3 weeks since I have written anything? Hey, things have been happening. I just haven’t written about them.

Where do you draw the line about silly stuff that happens at work and posting online about it? I work in Real Estate and sometimes the funniest stuff happens. For instance: we had a data entry clerk tell us that “no one told me addresses were required” when entering Listings into our online system.

Um. How do you think people are going to find those listings without addresses?

There’s the zero-error factor. A Realtor friend of mine had a home listed for $400,000.00. Last week, she got an offer for $3,900,000.00 on it. Her clients were thrilled.

The buyers probably backed out real quickly.

I have a lot of opportunity to slam my head on the desk.

I work with a Morning Person. You know what a Morning Person is, right? An annoying individual who doesn’t drink coffee and who speaks before you’ve had a chance to even sip your first cup of coffee. Fortunately, we now have a receptionist who does not do mornings and the focus of irritating someone has moved to her. “Good Morning! What’s not good about this morning? The sun is up/the rain is falling softly/your heart is beating/you’re not underground/it’s a brand new day!”

Let.Me.Drink.My.Coffee.In.Silence. Please.

Morning Person is also an extrovert. “What? You’re going out to your car for lunch? Why don’t you sit in the break room with me and eat lunch and talk?”

TALK? You want me to TALK during my lunch hour?

My coworker is also reinventing herself now that she is an Empty-Nester. She pesters peppers me with questions about my retirement plans. Well, actually, she didn’t realize I was talking about retirement. She thought I was looking for a second career that would take off tomorrow, complete with a Business Plan.

Um. NO. I retire in seven years. I want to have something in place when I retire. (By the way, I have decided to concentrate on artwork). “So, do you think you’ll make enough to live on?” she asks, glibly.

I stare at her. NO. I do have one artist friend who has made a successful career out of it & has even been entertained by the grandson of Henri Matisse (“who?” asks my coworker. Face Palm). I have another friend who shows her artwork in galleries. And yet another who mentored me this summer in the art of hawking my wares at faires.

Right time, right talent, ta da!

I’d like to write the Great American Novel, too, but this I do not share with my coworker. She would pester pepper me with questions about the plot and twists. No – I take that back. I did share with her, once. She went on a long rant about Stephanie Meyers and how she hit the market at the right time with the right novel. I countered with a long rant on everything that is wrong with the first two books in the Twillight Series.

1. The heroine, Bella, goes out into an ice storm in Washington State. Instead of falling on her arse (as I did in my first freezing rain), she nimbly makes it to her antique 4×4 pick-up truck and drives to school without mishap. It is only upon getting out of the truck and looking down that she realizes her father put chains on the front wheels of her truck.

Have you ever driven a pick-up truck with real chains on? Hell, ANY car with chains on? Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. Clank-clank-clank.

2. Someone comes to the local Pacific Northwest Outdoor Gear store and states they saw “Something big, hairy, and animal-like” loping across the road. Do you immediately think: “Werewolf”?

COME ON! BIG FOOT. Sasquatch. There will be ten Sasquatch Burger Joints opened within a three-mile radius of the first sighting within 24 hours. Everyone who lives up here knows there’s “something” out there. And it is not a werewolf named Jacob.

3. Creepy ancient guy has a crush on teen-age girl named Bella. Acts like a teenager with a crush on and a stalker.

I don’t even have to put anything in italics to answer that.

I never read the last books in the series. I think my youngest did, but only because she was determined that it couldn’t get worse. It got worse. They married and had a baby together. How does a dead guy even have living sperm?

Nevermind.

I am not comparing my novel to Ms. Meyers’ novel. Mine could be worse. I’m just saying… don’t compare me with Ms. Meyers until you’ve read the book.

Then you can have at it.

Anyway, I patiently explained that this is a retirement plan. A way to make a few extra dollars on top of my husband’s pension, SSI, and my 401-K (both of which are piddly). My coworker seemed surprised.

Retirement?

She thought I was only 54. I should be flattered, but I’m not. What’s four years? I’m (almost) 58.

She has a much better plan that I do. But planning ahead was never my forte. Handling money was never my forte.

Which brings me around to the irony of my job: I handle money. I’m actually very good at what I do. I make mistakes, but when I do – I own them. No excuses. No “noone told me…”, just a big “OH &%$#”. Most of my Real Estate Agents love me (and I love them), but sometimes I really can’t please one. It happens. It’s work. It’s what I do in the real world.

But I don’t think I ever glibly thought that Real Estate sold without an address.

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Thoughts on Reinvention

September 30, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

This is my third post on deciding what I want to be when I grow up. My mother always told me, “Grandma Moses started painting when she was 70 years old.” I don’t know if she meant she could have started a new career as an artist or if she meant to encourage me, but I do know that 70 years old sounded really, really, really old, and so I was duly impressed.

70 doesn’t sound that old to me now and time is closing in on me.

I decided the best way to go about this was to weigh the things I love doing against each other and to assess the monetary benefits of pursuing an action.

Writing is the most obvious way to make money, but writing is only my second love (I am excluding horses: I couldn’t make money with horses if I knew squat about them, and they cost a lot of money to own).

The first thing I ever did in life that I remember is to take a pencil and draw. I was drawing before I could write. I was in detention in Kindergarten for drawing a pine tree instead of a lollipop tree ( the kid sitting next to me tattled on me and told the teacher I was ‘drawing Christmas trees’. When I defiantly pointed out that it was not a Christmas tree (no decorations) and that it looked more like a tree than the lollipop tree (I probably used that term), the teacher made me stand in the corner. I was crushed, but my sense of defiance was strengthened).

I created my first sculpture in 5th grade. I remember it vividly: it was made out of home-made papier mâchè. Each student  in class made a bird, and the popular kids were very detailed and politically correct. My bird was a fantastical parrot-like creation, green, and funny-shaped. I was embarrassed at the outcome. Later in life, I realized that’s just how my brain translates to sculpture. All my papier mâchè creations since have been grotesque and strange. I’m fine with that.

I love to garden, but I came into that passion as an adult. I hated yard work when I was a child and my father snapped a long black whip over our heads. “Work, ye slaves, work! Ground, ye are! Two weeks’ detention: spend it clearing out the boulevard! I want that salt grass gone!” Other neighborhood kids came and watched us toil in our shackles and striped pajamas. “Those poor Wilcox kids. They’ll never be free…”

Okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic. The whip was imaginary. All the rest was real.

I love to read. If I could make as much money reading as I make working a forty-hour-a-week-job, I’d read for forty hours a week. At least. I’d even put in overtime.

I hate math. Herein lies one of the greatest ironies in life: God arranged for me to have a very nice job in a closing department for a real estate company. I spend forty hours a week dealing with numbers. I have a memory for patterns and numbers, and they come very easy for me. I only hate math because I had one good math teacher in my entire public school life (Mr. English in 8th Grade). The worst math teachers were in high school and higher math. I especially despise geometry.

I love science, but I can’t deal with the rote memory of it. You’d think that would be simple, but it isn’t. I had this very lofty dream of becoming a veterinarian when I was a freshman in high school. Enter Mr. Ricketts and his biology class. He was determined that we all understood what college was going to be like and he was hard. I learned to despise fruit flies. But what was driven home more than anything was that I do not have the ability to memorize biology terms. All we had to do was memorize the bones, musculature, and nymph system of the human body.

The final was the weekend after a big conference in Las Vegas for a volunteer group I had gotten involved with. We students screwed around a lot (one night, Tracie, “Rat”, Lance, and I ran around playing “doorbell ditch” on wedding chapels. We were all going to “get married” but we didn’t know to whom we wanted to get married). But I also spent a lot of time cramming for that test, and I remember sitting in the cafe with my biology book and notes. Mr. Ricketts was one of our chaperones and he came down for breakfast at the same time. I was making notes, reading and rereading.

I failed the test. My very first core subject failure. It was a pivotal moment in my life as dreams of becoming a veterinarian were dashed completely. Mr. Ricketts, who was a notorious bad-ass, gave me a D- on my report card. I deserved an F, but he knew how hard I’d studied in Las Vegas.

He did not know I wrote my first novel in biology and passed it around to my fellow students. It was titled, “Hey, Birds.”

Today, I had an interesting conversation with a new coworker. She’s from Iowa. I mentioned that I attended Grinnell College for a year. She replied, “Wow, that’s a rich kids’ college.” Well, yeah, it was then, too. It is also a very diverse college and a wonderful liberal arts education. I was just not prepared for living away from home in the middle of the flat lands. I was not college material at the age of 17 (my father warned me: he wanted me to take a year off and then go to college. I should have listened). I loved Grinnell.

I got to see/hear Ry Cooder. Oh my Gosh – he remains one of my absolute favorite independent musical artists. I had a great design 101 professor. I pulled a B+ average. One of my favorite courses was Humanities. World History was not far behind.

Still, I dropped out. World History, the Greeks, Poetry – those stick with me. I have a very dog-eared copy of Norton’s Anthology of Poetry (1974). John Donne became my favorite sonnet poet. Simone de Beauvoir was inspiring. I hate Freud.

I passed Physics for Dummies with flying colors with a paper on the artist Christo. What can I say? Christo had to understand physics in order to do the things he did with orange drapery.

I dropped out. I was not college-ready. I wanted to be John Steinbeck and write the Great American Novel. I’ve written three or four by now, and burned them all. The only novel I ever sent to a publisher was “Hey Birds” in the 1970’s. It was a truly awful book.

Now I am here: almost 58 and trying to decide which way I want to go. Tonight, I watched a You-Tube tutorial on oil pastels. I felt inspired. I knew that I was on the right track.

The end result of this rambling post is this: I want to be an artist. I buried my Talent for years and years as I worked my way through life: there was making a living to pay the rent, then there was marriage, and then there were children. I chose to homeschool my children which turned into a full-time job (that I will never regret, although their take on homeschooling is yet to be determined*). I was thrust into a full time job working for a real estate company.

And I found every excuse under the sun about why I couldn’t also pursue an artistic career. My bad.

Now, I want to correct that. I am leaning toward art. Really leaning. This is where I need accountability.

(I didn’t even touch on photography. I’ll make that my next post.)

*For Levi. My son. You would NEVER have broken so many laws if you had attended public school. You would NEVER have run as wild as you did if you had been in public school. You NEVER would have taken up Swing Dancing with the cute girls at community college when you were 14 if you had been in public school. I just want you to know that homeschooling worked in your favor.

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September 28, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

This weekend was like summer’s last call (although summer actually ended last weekend). I had SO.Much.To.Do.

Isn’t that what every gardener says?

I wrote down three goals for this weekend: squirrel feeder, plant bulbs, transplant one peony.

Working backwards: the one peony has been growing under what is now becoming the Hawthorne tree. My husband insists it is still a “bush”, but at over 6′ in height, I’m thinking it is a tree.

I dug up the peony as best as I could (there remains a root still under the Hawthorne). I replanted it in four places in the front yard. Do you know that I have NO peonies in my front yard? I have this incredible peony garden and not one single plant is in the front yard! Well, that changed tonight.

I also planted several Alyssum bulbs in the back yard and several new tulip bulbs around the yard. I moved some ground cover to the front yard.

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I also moved several sedums. We’ll see which ones grow. I planted them under my older lilac bush and built a little fence around them out of rhododendron branches.

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This poor lilac needs to have the fir tree above it trimmed down. I moved the lilac to this place when we moved in, not realizing that tyhe neighbor’s fir would outgrow and outshade the lilac. The neighbor is OK if we trim the tree up – it grew by accident. If my husband doesn’t get out there with a ladder, I will. The lilac is too precious to lose. It is a double-floret lilac colored bloom.

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I also put up my squirrel feeding station. I had to take the feeder down last winter due to the brown rats that had settled in under our house and which were using the feeder as their own. I hope the new station is not rat-friendly.

On a side note… Last night, I hauled the trash from the loft out and when I opened the door to the yard, I was confronted by my husband and Murphy. Murphy had his jaw firmly clenched, but two little white paws and a naked tail were hanging loose outside his mouth. He was not letting go. I turned back inside and retrieved a slice of lunch meat which I waved under Murphy’s nose. He gladly dropped the juvenile brown rat on to the deck and ate the lunch meat. My husband quickly disposed of the (mostly dead) rat.

Good Murphy. I think.

At least it wasn’t a Norway rat.

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Tell me I am weird and I don’t care. I like my cheap croquet fence. I planted bulbs behind it.

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I also installed the day bed frame as fence in the garden. I like how it looks.

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This is how we ended the weekend: a fire in the fire pit. 🙂

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Summer’s Last Hurrah

September 21, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

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We’re entering the Season of the Spider. I love late September and early October for the spiders. The big, fat, mother Argiope spiders amaze me with their art work.

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This one used bits of plant to embellish her web.

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Late Summer and early Autumn is also Aster time. This beauty is growing in a crack in the sidewalk. How it gets roots deep enough and strong enough to support itself is a wonder.

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The mother plant has been uprooted, replanted, divided, and moved so many times I can no longer count them. The original plant was a gift from a friend in the St. Johns’ neighborhood of Portland.

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I planted this aster and am continually amazed at the height and beauty of it. It isn’t as compact as the purple one, and it’s legginess causes a lot of issues, but the bees just adore it.

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The funnel spiders (family Agelenidae) have a hey-day in the Dog Days of Summer. They are relatively harmless to humans in the USA (I wouldn’t poke my finger down that web, I just don’t want my reader to freak out and call the Exterminator) and are very beneficial for killing other insects. Hmmm. I have a number of pesky Squash Bugs I want to drop down that funnel…

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I actually have grapes on my grapevine! The tag to the vine is somewhere on my desk, but I’m not going to try to dig it out to tell you the varietal. I lied: Interlaken Grapes.

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I saw this black pepper annual at the local BiMart and could not live without it. It is not edible, but it is simply gorgeous! I am hoping it will reseed itself in the pot and I will get volunteers in the Spring. The plant did not come with a tag but I had an easy time finding it on the Internet. It is called “Purple Flash”.

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I am amazed at the funnel spiders this year. This particular one has taken over my Yucca. Some people consider Yucca to be a pest and I acquired this particular plant when a neighbor re-did his yard. He set it out on the street with a FREE sign on it. I hauled it home and planted it by the water meter, on a strip of lawn we do very little with.

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The Yucca loves my neglect and the spider seems to love the Yucca.

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This phlox mysteriously appeared in my prayer garden. I don’t remember planting it.

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It is delicate and very pretty. I think it is a ground cover and I can possibly nurture it in it’s present location. I dug out another ridiculous ground cover that I purchased from a school plant sale and ended up hating because it encroached on the Douglas Meadowfoam that blooms there in the spring. The Meadowfoam came with the maple tree my husband brought me from the mountains (also the Yew).

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I think I remember planting this mallow last Spring. It surprised me with a spurt of growth and a bloom (or several) this year. I have no record of the plant, but I know it is a mallow.

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The mallow’s sisters are my hollyhocks. Those I remember planting. I also remember how my father hated hollyhocks.

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Personally, I love hollyhocks.

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My one remaining fuschia takes refuge in the shade of the yew and the maple, and still provides me with beautiful blooms all summer. I bought it from the same school plant sale as the ground cover I hated.

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I think this is a marigold. It just sprouted and volunteered its services. I am waiting for the bloom.

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Speaking of a volunteer: what is it with tomatoes? It is the last full day of summer and I find this volunteer tomato plant in the garden. Really?

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The windflowers finally decided to sprout and produce a single plant in the garden. I am loving their last minute blooms.

Tomorrow, Autumn begins. Today, Summer had one last hurrah.

 

 

 

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Hold Me Accountable

September 19, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

Once a month, I get together with a group of people I used to work with. We started the ritual when my former supervisor “retired” in 2013 as a way to keep her spirits up. The group has expanded since then to include people who left the company several years ago but who remain friends, and to include people who were victims of the most recent lay-offs. We all have the one thing in common: the place where we all worked at one point in time. That is not really enough of a tie to keep the friendships going: there has to also be mutual respect, interest in the current lives, and a look toward the future.

We are all of an older demographic and the job market has not been kind to those who have had to brave the unemployment lines. Eventually, they have all – without exception – accepted their new “forced” retirement. Not all have accepted the new phase of their life with grace, but some have.

I wonder what would happen to me if I were to be thrown into their ranks? Right now, I still hold a job in the same industry that forced their retirement. It is this thinking that has prompted me to wonder what I can do to kindle my passion here at home and turn that passion into employment. I don’t want to take being employed for granted.

I have a coworker who is returning to school to pursue her Master’s Degree. She has a lot more energy than I do, I think. I should have the energy to do that: pursue a degree after hours and expand my options. I’m just not entirely convinced that having a degree helps after a person turns 60 (I’m not there yet, but soon).

I need a kick in the butt to take some art classes. I could do that part-time. Or writing.

But here’s the excuse:

 

OK. I don’t have one. At least not a good one.

I think I will look into my online options over the weekend. Art. Writing. Master Gardening.

You are my mentors. Hold me accountable.

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Passion in the Work Place

September 17, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

It was a hot and steamy affair between the copy machine and the handsome postage machine, but they were separated by a wall they could only breach by cable…

Wait. Let’s try this again.

I had a dream last night.

I was in a house that resembled the elementary school I attended in the early 1960’s. I had the sense that the dream was picking up where my subconscious left off the night before: leaving that building in a pouring rain storm, thinking I was late for high school and wondering why I was even bothering to go.

I was leaving the elementary school in the pouring rain, wearing my son’s black windbreaker with the hood pulled up over my carefully coifed and heavily hairsprayed hair. I only had to walk the two blocks to my childhood home. The first block had a Farmers’ Market going on that I had to pass, but I pulled the hood down and avoided the stares and calls of the hawkers. I crossed Bridge Street to the last block. There was a ditch between the one-way streets, but in my mind I knew the ditch had been covered over since we moved out and so I forced it to appear as it would now. It was covered in snow. The house looked the same, but the entire drive way was blocked by snow piles up to three and four feet in depth. We didn’t live there, but I needed to get to the door and I was crushed that I couldn’t get past the snow.

I returned to the school and decided to start over. This part of the dream was jumbled: I was in a house that was the school, but I was also at work and a coworker was there. I did not recognize anyone else, but they were incidental. A pile of work mail and files was atop the coverlet to the bed in the Master suite. I commented that I was “off the clock” now, but I noticed that a check in a UPS envelope was among the items on the bed. “I’ll just put this in the safe drawer before I leave,” I said.

I repeated my walk home, but this time the ditch was covered over in grass and the drive to the house was wet concrete. “I made the snow melt!” I thought, and I felt elated. I had a key to the house and as I put it into the lock, a stranger approached. She wanted entrance because she knew the people who lived there now, and I let her in. I no longer needed to enter the house; I was happy to know I had access.

I went into a guest house (unfamiliar to me) and locked the door. This was where I would be staying. A king-sized bed awaited me and a long glass window that ran the length of one side of the house and which opened only at the top and at an angle to let in the air. I headed to the shower.

I googled the meaning of snow before I headed off to work and this is what struck me: “To see snow in your dream signifies your inhibitions, unexpressed emotions and feelings of frigidity. You need to release and express these emotions and inhibitions. Alternatively, snow means that you are feeling indifferent, alone and neglected.  If the snow is melting, then it suggests that you are acknowledging and releasing emotions you have repressed. You are overcoming your fears and obstacles.” (from DreamMoods.com)

The fact that the dream has stayed with me all day is also significant: I only remember dreams that God wants me to remember and they are often prophetic or they are important in other ways. I don’t sense this one is prophetic, only that it is a clear working-through of an issue, or a problem. It is significant to me that it came on the heels of yesterday’s first post about looking for passion in my work.

Several images jump out at me. I cut and pasted from the website (my favorite dream interpretation site). What is in italics is my interpretation and thoughts:

school – a dream that takes place in school may be a metaphor for the lessons that you are learning from your waking life. You may be going through a “spiritual learning” experience.

I can’t find it tonight but I searched “late for school” yesterday and the result was about looking for answers, feeling unsettled in life, and general turmoil. It is a common dream thread.

ditch –To see a ditch in your dream indicates that there is something in your waking life that you need to avoid.  Alternatively, the dream suggests that you need to let go of the emotional baggage and frivolity that are holding you back.

I’m not sure of the significance in my dream. When I was a kid, the ditch was real and had steep, rocky banks. Sometime just before we moved, the city put in culverts and covered the ditch, covering it with a nice park-like lawn. If the ditch had significance in my dream, it was that I was in a lucid dream state and I could control the imagery. I knew the ditch was covered up and I “forced” it to appear that way in my dream. Therefore, I was forcing the emotional baggage and frivolity back.

The dream may also be on pun on ditching school, work, appointment, or something that you are now feeling guilty about

Now, that is funny. 🙂

childhood home/not needing to enter when I finally knew I could – In particular, to see your childhood home indicates your own desires for building a family and your family ideologies. It also reflects aspects of yourself that were prominent or developed during the time you lived in that home. You may experience some unfinished feelings that are being triggered by some waking situation. To dream that you cannot find your way home indicates that you have lost faith and belief in yourself. It may also signify a major transition in your life.

I find this interesting. My childhood home has often been a theme in my dreams, but only because it was a haunted house and I was still dealing with the poltergeist of my childhood. Sometime ago, I finally banished that demon. In this dream, the house was not haunted, did not pose a spiritual threat, but only beckoned to me as a place I needed to return to. Once the snow was removed and I could reach the door, I no longer had a need to enter the house. I even allowed someone else to go in and take up residence there, because I knew I did not have ownership of the place – nor did I desire that.

key – To see a key in your dream symbolizes opportunities, access, control, secrets, freedom, knowledge or responsibilities. You may be locking away your own inner feelings and emotions. Or you are unlocking the answer to some problem.

OBVIOUS.

the check – To see a check in your dream suggests that you may feel indebted to others. The dream may also be a pun on checking things out. To see a blank check in your dream symbolizes your unused potential. It may also indicate unclaimed rewards.

This is interesting. I thought it was just a reflection of what I do for a living (I receive in checks and make the daily bank deposit). I didn’t actually see the check so parts of that may not apply – but I knew a check was in the envelope because that is what I do for a living in real, waking, life.

being ‘clocked out’ (but needing to finish the job – at least by putting the important mail into a safe place) – To see a clock in your dream signifies the importance of time in some waking situation. You may be feeling some anxiety of not being on top of things. Your mind may be preoccupied with a deadline that you have to meet or some other time-sensitive issue. It is time for you to tread on and speed up your actions. Alternatively, clocks symbolize the ticking of the human heart and thus is indicative of the emotional side of your life. If the clock has stopped, then it signifies death

Death is not necessarily physical death, but death of the past or a spiritual or emotional death. Death is always symbolic of change.

shower – symbolizes spiritual or physical renewal and forgiveness. You are washing the burdens out of your life

That would be appropriate. I had the very definite sense of washing off the old (the former school) and entering something new (the guest house which was a new structure to my dreams).

To see a guest in your dream signifies new challenges and interests in your life

Ya think???

—–

The windbreaker is not important: it is merely an image of the black windbreaker of my son’s that I took possession of when he moved out ten years ago. It’s a nice windbreaker and he was amused that I still wore it when I visited him last week. The subconscious picks up on strange things.

Carefully coiffed hair – probably not important, just an image of how impossible it is to keep my hair “carefully coiffed” even with a ton of hair spray and gel products. It rains and my hair-do is toast. Heck, my hair-do is toast by noon on a dry day. I have lame hair.

I share this dream because I believe it has everything to do with what I am looking for. It’s a sub-conscious extension of the blog I posted yesterday and of what I am looking for in my life. It is also an answer.

I just need to find the key to the answer – but I know something has already shifted in my search because the snow melted. That is significant.

 

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Pursuing Passion

September 16, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

I am in a strange place of wondering. Or is that wandering? I work at a job for a corporation and the job not only pays the bills but it provides me with health insurance (albeit high deductible insurance, which, at my age, is expensive)(face it: my medications for one month are costly and my dental needs have always been <ahem> expensive. And I wear trifocals). The job does not fulfill my need for passion and intellectual growth; it is ‘just a job’. I feel no deep, lingering, sense of loyalty to a corporation that doesn’t even know I exist.

My children have not only grown and flown the nest, but they have taken my grandchildren with them (darn those parental units!). I have no one to homeschool anymore except Harvey and Murphy, and neither one of them is interested in listening to me read “Old Yeller” or “Where the Red Fern Grows” out loud.

My studio is currently littered with the detritus of art supplies, school supplies, and desk necessities: how many sets of oil pastels can one person accidentally acquire? Erasers? Tubes of oil paints? Watercolours in various forms? Clay? How often do I actually sit down and sketch something?

I have a little sketch journal I carry in my car. It has two or three sketches from camping trips over the years and it is only half full. Unfinished paintings and drawings litter the boxes and drawers. I have stacks of unused canvas board, watercolour or ink pads, and an interesting collection of India ink bottles.

Hidden in my desk are reams of college-lined loose leaf notebook paper, spiral notebooks, and pretty stationery I purchased when stationery stores were still commonplace.

Summer is not a good time to be in the studio. It is in the loft of our home and heat rises. There are two fans at either end of the loft and on a “normal” summer, they suffice to keep the house cool on the three or four days in a row of hot weather that we get. This summer had been unusually dry and warm, and the loft has been stuffy. But I don’t play with all these things in the winter, either, so blaming my catharsis on heat is merely an excuse. Still, I am paralyzed.

I have a novel I am working on. I get in about a thousand words a night when I actually sit down and work at it. It is easier now with MS Word as the typing paper doesn’t stack up and get mixed up, and I can delete paragraphs with the touch of a key. The story is stalled on a crucial plot pivot. I’ve rewritten it several times in the past two months.

The fact of the matter is that I rise early and leave the house before 7AM. I drive to work, listening to the road report and 80’s music. I work eight hours with a one-hour lunch break. That lunch break is taken in my car, hiding from my coworkers and the public in general, working on a crossword and trying to commune with God or taking a nap. My drive home takes 45 minutes to an hour and a half, and by the time I walk in the front door, my brain is dead. All creativity has been sucked out of me. I only want to hide in a darkened room with no sound for an hour. I’m dead to the interesting objects around me.

What is the answer? I need to find my passion. I need to rekindle the fire that burned in me when I was young and had the whole world to burn. My mind imagines the paintings, but when I pick up the brushes to paint – I think about the clean up!! My mind imagines the plot twists, but when I sit down to type – the past day floats before my eyes.

I took a couple online tests: “find your passion”. They all came up the same. I want to learn, first and foremost. I want to create, second. I prefer to work alone, third.

I have a coworker who is constantly annoyed at the things I “know”. Somehow, acquiring knowledge is not her passion and she resents me for my interests and my passion for facts. I don’t mind people correcting me when I am wrong about something, but I really get annoyed when people who do not know anything themselves seek to mock me for at least trying to understand and know things. Can I slap her now? Correct me because you know more and I’m fine. I’ll go back and research the subject, acquiesce if necessary. But mock me because I know something you don’t? How grade school.

I need to write. Writing comes to the top of nearly every quiz or test taken. Art (which I had once considered my primary passion) is down a notch. Gardening and the natural world is tucked in between writing and art: I am a Naturalist at heart.

How can I be a Naturalist when most of my hours are spent in a concrete prison? My car is parked in a parking lot with almost no landscaping, only feet from the MAX lines and US Hwy 26 West. I listen to lightrail and freeway sounds during my lunch hour. I hate that parking lot. I despise the cubicle culture and the “modern” art on the walls of the office (really? couldn’t they have at least selected actual original artwork instead of mass-produced canvas imitations for which the artists received squat?). I resent that I have to petition my office in order to hang my framed Monet print or my framed Edward Robert Hughes print. At least my selections have signatures that mean something: who the hell remembers who squirted paint onto the canvas to resemble bird poop? (But that’s the Naturalist in me, again, isn’t it? Monet’s flowers and Hughes’ faeries versus paint tube splatters and Elephant art.)(Apologies to the elephants.)

The $64,000 question is this: how can I pursue my passions and still make enough money to keep the mortgage (and health insurance) paid? The job (which is just that: a job, not a passion and not a career) pays the bills. I have eight more years before I can retire. I am unhappy. I have deep stirrings to change my life and do it NOW. I also have a strong leaning toward being cautious (the Introverted self and the Controlling self).

I plan to continue blogging along this line for awhile as I seek, knock, ask. I intend to find the answer. I intend to succeed at my passion and my calling. Stay tuned.

 

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CCU, Hollywood Cemetery, and Good Friends

September 14, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

CCU = Christ Centered Unschoolers. It is a Yahoo List/forum for homeschoolers with an unschooling bent. We’re not necessarily of the same faith despite the name and we’re all in different stages of life or raising children. It is not a list to go to to learn how to unschool or even how to homeschool, although you can get that information from the many members. It is more of a place for prayer, friendship, and support in all the issues that come with life and homeschooling. I discovered the list around the end of 1997 or early 1998, the first year I homeschooled my kids. I no longer have children at home but I remain a member of the list because the members of that list have become life-long friends.

My trip out to North Carolina presented me with the opportunity to hook up with some of these friends. (There are a lot of people I would have also liked to have met up with, also, but the ccu friends are the ones that made it possible with my schedule.)

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Karen drove from her home to Fayetteville to have lunch with my son, two of his children, and me. She’s every bit as beautiful in person as she is on line.

I flew in and out of Richmond specifically to hook up with one of my oldest ccu friends, Mary Ann. Mary Ann runs the website, “The Homeschool Mom”. Her website was one of my first discoveries when I was trying to figure out the “how to’s” of homeschooling, right about the time that I found the unschooling list online. A special bonus was added when yet another friend from the list, photographer April C. Raszman was able to drive to Richmond on the same weekend. (April’s link is to Facebook, so unless you have a FB account or her site is public, you probably won’t be able to see her beautiful photography).

To celebrate our first real-life meeting, Mary Ann looked up places to go and picked the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. That probably sounds pretty bizarre, but – it really is not. Mary Ann and I share a passion for genealogy and it was a wonderful photo opp for April. I think we all love old cemeteries (and I know my mother would have been in heaven in this place – pun intended).

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First stop: the pyramid.

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It is huge. From the webpage:

Monument to the Confederate War Dead
This famed 90-foot pyramid stands as a monument to the 18,000 Confederate soldiers buried in Hollywood Cemetery. It was created through the efforts of the women of the Hollywood Memorial Association, who tended the graves of the Confederate dead after the Civil War. They worked together to raise over $18,000 and commissioned the help of engineer Charles Henry Dimmock to design the pyramid.

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There are marks on the stones from the drills used to break the rock into shapes for the building of the monument.

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Mary Ann ponders our route through the maze as April and I take photos. Well, April took photos, I wandered off to read head stones.

The cemetery is for Confederate dead, and for families who can trace their family lineage back to Confederate ties. Mary Ann can do that, having grown up in the Richmond/Washington D.C. area where many of the battles were fought. The headstones close to the monument date from the earliest battles to the latest battles and are loosely grouped by dates. Many of the dead were originally buried elsewhere and were re-interred at the Hollywood Cemetery. There are dozens of unnamed soldiers buried there.

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One of the sights to see is this cast iron Newfoundland dog who guards the grave of a little girl. The website does not give her name or any other details, and the headstone is too worn to read. We know she died in 1862.

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The grave itself has become something of a modern day altar, strewn with baby toys. Did grieving parents leave the toys or did children who were touched by the story leave them? I found a blog post on the grave by Richmond on the James.

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I hope to see April’s photos soon. She showed us the raw ones as she set up her views. My own attempts at framing are pitiful, but that isn’t going to stop me from sharing them. I loved how ornate some of the later monuments are.

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Look at the detail carved in that stone!

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There were many family plots like this one, some of which are still waiting for the last family member to pass and be buried there. (I’m not sure I would be cool with that: having my name and birth date recorded on a headstone that is just waiting for me to die…)

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The tenth President of the United States, John Tyler, was buried at the Hollywood Cemetery in 1862. He was the first president whose death was not nationally recognized because of his ties to the south, but Confederate President Jefferson Davis held a huge going-away ceremony for him.

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The fifth President of the United States was re-interred at the Hollywood Cemetery due to his southern roots. This is the “Birdcage” where President James Monroe’s remains are buried.

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Last among the presidents is Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

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April at work.

April, Mary Ann, and I fell into an easy friendship. We’ve known each other for years on-line and the segue into real-life friendship was just as easy. I do wish Karen could have come to this outing, but I am still so very blessed that she drove down to Fayetteville to have lunch with me!

We had to leave the cemetery way too early: we arrived there a little after 4:00 pm EDT and the gates closed at 6:00. they closed right behind us, in fact. That’s how close we called it.

We then had dinner at a wonderful Mexican Restaurant on Cary Street, Little Mexico.

Our last stop was my motel, Four Points by Sheraton. I booked it through Expedia and picked it as one of the least expensive close to the airport with a free shuttle to the airport. I still paid too much ($112) but after spending the night there – it was worth the cost. For starters, the staff was wonderful.

I was subject to a lecture by Gwen (who checked me in and then took our photo) about not going skinny dipping in the pool and no boys in my room. 10357135_10203671998852835_4187457787783968504_n

We did not plan our outfits! This is just how good friends manage to think alike! It was so wonderful to end my vacation with a mini-get-together with some of my closest and dearest friends. I have many more friends from ccu that I have yet to meet, but getting to meet three of them in one week = priceless!

The cemetery was just a bonus.

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