More later on this part. I did some other sections though...

Well, besides trying to figure it all out (you know, the obvious things like what am I supposed to be doing and why is the 'check engine' light on in my car and why some people have to die in a war and why are my chickens hiding their eggs from me and why do most of my important people live so far away and how can their be so many fires burning in California at once and why would someone ever put a bumper sticker on their truck that says 'If you've got the nuts follow my ruts'?) I am really psyched about my fairly recent switch in gears - from ceramics and graphic arts to plants!

I'm helping set up a nursery and propagating plants and watching them make roots and trying to keep the greenhouse doing what it needs to so that the babies all grow happily. The shoveling gravel part isn't my favorite, but the rest is pretty great.

Colours and growing plants and painting tile and petting cats and I'm not so good at keeping the racoon out of the kitchen it seems. I am really good at having a lot of PAPER around. More paper than I like. Bills, magazines, stuff that shows up in the mail, there seems to be an awful lot of that. I also can mess up a kitchen something fierce but usually there is something tasty at the end. I'm good at feeling like an insignificant speck when I go to the desert, which I love. I used to be good at making my friends work when they came to visit, but ever since I made Zizi dig that fire pit with me I've been in the doghouse so I don't do that anymore. Now I actually sit in the hammock once in a while and I must say, it's a fine thing. Much to my dismay, I am not really good at singing, but at least no one can hear you when you're driving by yourself. And then there is math. Let's not even talk about that. Think of it like this - I got the colours and someone else got the numbers.

Maybe the fake yellow hair, or certain days it could be some silly sunglasses, and other days when I make myself invisible, no one notices anything.

Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer, an amazing mind!), The Passion, Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson - whose words sometimes make me feel like I'm eating instead of reading) although I forget things pretty close to as fast as I read them. A Story Like The Wind and A Far Off Place, by Laurens Van der Post, which I never expected to get into but completely did, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, Self Made Man by Norah Vincent...

Music? Oh my. Gigi, T.Rex, Ray LaMontagne, The Clash, Tabla Beat Science, Massive Attack, Corey Harris, White Stripes, M.I.A., Devo, Beethoven, Gillian Welch, Paul Simon, Midival Punditz, Jane Siberry, Leftfield, Loop Guru, cheesy 90's queer dance club music, Tabla Beat Science, The Cramps, Starlings, TN, Bizet's Carmen, Patti Smith, Alison Krause, Diamonda Gala (sometimes but not a lot because you can't do her a lot even though you think she is amazing), did I say Paul Simon (I consider him a poet of the highest order and find his music can be as if it were stuck to the end of a spear headed straight for the deepest part of your insides)? oh, and of course, Leonard Cohen, who I would start smoking cigarettes again for if he came over for dinner.

Speaking of dinner, I'm kind of hungry.
Eat lots of local, organic produce, but love delicious creamy things, red wine, cheese oh cheese, too many things. I cook a lot, finally figured out how to make a decent loaf of bread, which seemed to take me 20 years longer than it should have but there you have it. Good ice cream. Coffee. Don't even try to talk to me prior. Love Italian food and Indian food and all kinds of food but don't go out often due to my lovely, rural existence.

Coffee, Sir Victor Guinea Longpaw, sunlight, my tribe, music, a really big cozy sweater, macaroni and cheese, a woodstove in winter.

Yeah, I know that's 8. My numbers thing isn't that severe.

How people in long term relationships have pulled it off, which is really to say that I'm envious and am sometimes saddened by the realization that our histories really did have an effect after all, pondering the trade-offs that I've made by choosing to live in a remote and incredibly beautiful rural area, wondering where the chickens are laying their eggs, whether or not the greenhouse is getting too hot or too dry, which sound goes with which bird, how Zizi's date is going, why I'm not one of the people who have figured out how to use a credit card to accumulate an airline ticket now and then, why the bobcat shows up at noon to eat my chickens and isn't even scared of me, if I remembered to turn off or on the right sprinklers, valves and hoses at R's house, about how I miss making tile and how am I ever going to find Olive to get that scone recipe?

Mmmm...maybe eating fresh bread with my pals, dipping it into the best olive oil from the lovely young orchard that I help care for, sitting outside feeling the warm air on my skin with some wine, watching Chicken TV (which really isn't TV at all), could be watching a movie or building a fire if it's winter, definitely petting a cat, cooking with friends, digging the sky...