i have not written in a while, partly due to my crazy schedule (i will have at least 24 hours of comp time from working that shall never be redeemed) and partly to my high level of anxiety about this next life transition that i cannot seem to shake. well, i am better, i can actually breathe now. i was talking to a co-volunteer about this anxiety and we came to the conclusion that seeing so many people at the shelter who cannot seem to make things work, who have no support network, who have seen failure after failure until there is no hope left can skew your perspective a bit. and than i remembered that i am not alone and for that i am very very thankful.

we have our big final concert in a few days and i am freaked out. i think that also has something to do with a viewing of a documentary that a local yokel made...it's called 'everyone but you: a documentary about being an independent artist/ musician/ failure' i don't know why but it just made me feel down.

oh well. i am especially bummed because we collectively just wrote a new song that is my FAVORITE we have done so far and it won't be ready for its debut aka it won't be debuted ever because rachel's going to india and i cannot play the piano. but we do have four originals to play, so thats exciting---my main role is as lyricist in the creative process. anyway-one of the songs i wrote by myself and am continually fighting my sheepish feelings at its, well, i don't know what. but i do know i really do like, no matter what anyone else says, so there!

i feel like a marathoner dragging myself toward the finish line that is still some distance away. at this rate they are not going to make me miss alamosa at all! except for the people i love here...
good news about today: only two hours in the office and the rest of the day with harry.

i am really excited about networking

a woman in my work group lives in boulder and....has friends...who run a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm! and i had been looking for one in my area and hadn't found one....and there it is--my local (ish) csa. so fresh vegetables, raw milk, and eggs are in my near, forseeable future...that means my own cheese and yogurt can be made. and i can go volunteer and learn on a farm!! so i can have my own!!

http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page

i mean, really?

Success
To laugh ofetn and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others;
to leave the world a better place,
whether by a healthy child
a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

-attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson
more likely by Bessie Stanley, 1904

this week i had a dream where i was at the ocean and could not escape the huge waves that were coming toward me. this was the first dream i have had of waves since college, where almost every week i would dream of terrifying waves or my teeth falling out. i think it means i am overwhelmed. today i slept in until 9, ate breakfast, and then took a nap, rolling into the office at 1 in the afternoon. lovely.

i have groups consecutively until i leave but allison is going to help me out.

and rachel is bequeathing to me her free massage tomorrow :) hooray!

and now i shall go back to bed.

we have a mouse in our house. yes, for real. and it didn't really bother me until i saw that the clever little monster managed to get into a drawer and chew up my favorite wooden spoon. oh, it is on now little mouse. you do not eat my cooking spoons, no sir. you better watch those pretty paws of yours because today i am putting out the traps.

last night i had an impromptu dinner party. like shawna said, its nice to eat fancy food but still be able to eat with your fingers. i will tell you what we had because i am shamefully proud of myself. stuffed artichoke, shrimp and grits, green beans, baked pears with carmel sauce. simple but so yummy.

keirsa and i just finished a 12 hour baking marathon. thats right 12 hours, for Allison's wedding tomorrow.

5 chocolate pear cakes
6 lemon lavender cakes
2 chocolate raspberry tarts
2 choclate cherry tarts
1 mixed berry tart
55 lavender cupcakes

12 hours.

here are the non-scary pics. to get to our base camp of lake como we had to hike about five miles up an atrocious jeep road, so lots of rocks and little shade. but the lake was gorgeous. the mountain you can see above lake como is little bear, blanca is just around the corner.

the ascent of mount doom...

well it wasn't really mount doom but there really were times i thought i was on the verge of blinking out of exisitence on this last hiking excursion. Emmy, Sam, Shawna, and I hiked up to mt. Blanca, the local fourteener (In mountaineering terminology in the United States, a fourteener is a mountain that exceeds 14,000 feet (4,267.2 m) above mean sea level. The importance of fourteeners is greatest in Colorado, which has the majority of such peaks in North America. Climbing all of Colorado's fourteeners is a popular pastime among peak baggers. wikipedia)Mt Blanca is the 4th highest mountain in Colorado at 14, 345 feet . And the third and scariest fourteener I have ever climbed. We are talking bouldering along a steep basin wall, don't look down and don't look up, but cling to the rock oh heavens am i there yet scary. i don't have a lot of pics from the top but have some from the first half of our hike so i posted some of the ones we used as our map... i love how easy the little blue line makes it look, la di da, just walk along here, boop boop boop, here we go... meanwhile i was trying not to throw up.

while i am doing links....

katherine sent this to me...and it is exactly how i feel



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM

check out my mom at her cool conference!
http://www.lindau-nobel.de/content/section/2/17/
go to live feed, click on opening ceremonies and you get a scan of mom at about a minute and 48 seconds. woot woot! (she is in polka dots)

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All my pictures are out of order. in this interactive blog it is up to you to place them in the correct sequence. (each ___ indicates a corresponding picture)

Last saturday Emmy and I decided to hike the infamous South Zapata Lake Trail. We left the house at 6:00 am in order to be able to hike in the cool morning air and be below the tree line by noon-ish. ___ This was the view from the bottom of the mountain, while our legs were fresh and the sun was not quite above the mountains. We had to cross south zapata creek several times. At our first crossing I suggested we try to cross barefoot for there were not enough rocks to hop across on. That was a miserable idea, for once I got both feet in the water I could no longer feel them. Then we saw the logs that everyone else was smart enough to cross on ____. The trail was really hard in some spots, with really steep inclines and lots of skree, there was more than one spot where i stopped to take in the scenary and to rearrange my lungs so the insides were inside again and the outsides outside again ____. Before we knew it we were halfway there and we could see the valley through the trees ____ and decided to stop for a snack. unfortuately an accident of gravity caused some of the gorp to spill on the trail and to remain in keeping with Leave No Trace techniques, we were beholden to eat it. off the ground. i actually really don't mind eating off the ground but in this particular case bark seemed to always make it into my mouth, no matter how hard i examined each handful____. After our break we crossed the creek again ___ and then the trail opened up into a beautiful valley ____ where I did break out singing 'The Hills are alive with the sound of music' It was stunning. By this point we had been hiking 3.5 hours and, not going to lie, were exhausted! The first body of water I saw, I was sure it was the lake and ran toward it, doing a celebration dance when emmy pointed out that it was rather small ____. oops. So we continued on, drawing closer and closer to the mountain, hoping over each knoll there was a lake ___. And finally! we saw it South Zapata Lake____. Emmy striking her victory pose ___.


Next week Blanca!



(correct order: 9,10,6,12,7,11,8,2,1,3,4)

last night we won our softball game, 11-4. and we were down two players, playing 8 to 10. and i made another out at home. and i walloped the ball when at bat and it went past second base. unfortunately it was in a lovely arc that inevitably ends in an out. oh well.

other amazing christa moments (you know you all want to see me play):
-dashing to second and slipping on the sandy base, falling on my butt but maintaining enough clarity to reach back and snag the mound with my hand.
-a batter's foul ball ricocheting off my knee cap. ouch.
-same batter, different foul just slipping out of my glove as i dove for it.
-flirting with the umpire, per usual.

i am exhausted. right now i almost feel like i am having an out of body experience as i try and gear up to go lead my group for the day.

wish me luck.

i made a vow this week to be more positive in my verbal expression of my opinions of the people i encounter in my life.

today this vow was sorely tried.

a gentleman in my workgroup actually called me 'honey' in that dripping, condescending tone of voice that automatically triggers every ninja-like quality within me. the man was lucky i was weedwacking and could thus take out my anger on the innocent weeds. he thought i was 'sweet and all' but didn't want to 'offend my sensibilities' with his plan to keep the yard we were working on weed free. he didn't want to tell me, i assume, because it was clear that i did not agree with his declaration that the poor people who lived there were 'lazy.' i am sorry, there are more important things than yards, like PEOPLE, and i would like to see him live the life of a single mom with three kids working two jobs and come home at night and pull weeds it instead of putting your kids to bed. I bit my lip instead of yelling WHY ARE YOU HERE? HAVEN'T YOU HEARD OF MERCY OR COMPASSION? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? but instead i smiled and pulled sniveling weeds from the ground.


and this was only one incident.


so things i am thankful for:

i only had to work a day and a half with this man
i had a dance party in the work shop with three middle school girls
i saw Georgia who loves me and can get me to do anything for her because she loves my cobbler
happy hour at the brew pub

summertime does well by me.

i spelled my own name wrong - can you find it?

i am at the local boys and girls club, layin' down some tracks, as it were. yo. so far we have recorded 'uncommonly familiar' our one successful original (we have many originals, but we don't talk about all of them) and now Rachel is working on 'godspeed' our flutist has a migraine and cannot be here tonight but hopefully she will come record soon. our contact in the boys and girls club will only be here for june, so we are trying to get as much done as possible to capture the short life of LuLu. i actually really do not like recording because, well, i can hear all my mistakes. and there are a lot. hopefully technological magic can smooth out all the rough edges.

working with volunteers makes me very self-reflective (because of vanity? chirstacentric thinking?) but i always think of what my mom once said, that you children are a reflection of yourself. so my work group and their attitudes, enjoyment of the week, etc. is a reflection of my attitude and ability to lead, etc. so basically i am constantly freaking out. but i am getting better at it. and on one of the evaluations filled out by work group member one person put ' christa is great. could use a clone of her' so i've got that going for me.

i am at the local boys and girls club, layin' down some tracks, as it were. yo. so far we have recorded 'uncommonly familiar' our one successful original (we have many originals, but we don't talk about all of them) and now Rachel is working on 'godspeed' our flutist has a migraine and cannot be here tonight but hopefully she will come record soon. our contact in the boys and girls club will only be here for june, so we are trying to get as much done as possible to capture the short life of LuLu. i actually really do not like recording because, well, i can hear all my mistakes. and there are a lot. hopefully technological magic can smooth out all the rough edges.

working with volunteers makes me very self-reflective (because of vanity? chirstacentric thinking?) but i always think of what my mom once said, that you children are a reflection of yourself. so my work group and their attitudes, enjoyment of the week, etc. is a reflection of my attitude and ability to lead, etc. so basically i am constantly freaking out. but i am getting better at it. and on one of the evaluations filled out by work group member one person put ' christa is great. could use a clone of here' so i've got that going for me.

Today is one of those days for me where i just want to stretch out in the sun until I am empty and can think straight again. Or just sit in silence with no need to think about when i need to move or talk again, rather i can just sit with only infinate time as my companion. and maybe a book.

I had a thought today about my work group. one of the things i try to talk about in regards to the homeless is how everyone has a story and everyone has a past and that it is so important not to judge on what you see but to spend time getting to know a person, see what is really going on. and it struck me that some members of this work group seemed to be battling their own demons as well. I mean, so many people come wanting to 'help' (i just heard someone say that 'help' and 'nice' are the worst of the four letter words. amen) and this mentality makes us unable to see our own brokenness or our own need for community or whatever. but some people in this group seemed so sad and i hate that i couldn't, you know, intrude in their lives and minds and ask them what was going on or what is wrong. (also, interesting personal insight, if something is wrong i assume i am the cause or reason for it, which more often than not is not the case. i wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what i was doing wrong, but it wasn't about me. maybe its simply a symptom of vanity and selfishness. but i don't know how to deprogram my brain. besides the afore mentioned sitting in the sun until all bad juju seeps away) only five more hours of work in this ten hour day of mine. i need a hammock, a tree house, a stream, a cone of cream and dream, or a nap to piece back together my brain.

today i discovered one of my favorite author's websites.

and i love her even more. we could be bosom friends.

www.robinmckinley.com

i would recommend reading her FAQs section (link found at the bottom of the website)

and i need to buy her new book, Sunshine. and she has another coming out this fall.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!