My Lil' Nemesis

I joined a Dodgeball team. I was pretty doubtful about it at first. Like many people, my memories of Dodgeball from elementary school are universally unpleasant. What is it that is supposed to be fun about getting drilled by a ball?? However, in the spirit of my New Year’s resolution, when I was invited to play, I accepted. Hearing that the balls are small, softer than a Nerf ball and that it is quite a challenge to inflict pain with them helped make it a bit more appealing.

Turns out that Dodgeball is way fun. Our team, Catfish Mud, is thoroughly awful, but the team is full of nice, amusing, silly people and I laugh a ton. We have yet to win a single match-up, but I feel confident that we are improving and will triumph eventually. We are slowly grasping the whole strategy thing, which helps. One of the nicest things about the whole scene is that there are all sorts of ages there. The littlest Dodgeballers are about 7 (they only count as half a player for the team and you have to hit them twice for them to be out) and just about every age from 7 up to 40 is there.

The little ones are the most entertaining. They take it quite seriously and get very ferocious. Several of them are also wicked good. They also make great target practice and are easy to steal the balls from during warm-up. Tonight we were in constant battle during the warm-up with one in particular and found ourselves matched up against his team for our opening game. Unfortunately for us it was one of our worst losses yet. We had been doing so well beforehand, throwing the ball a little harder, catching balls thrown at us, hitting people on occasion, but when it came to game time we choked. Our little nemesis was quite pleased about it and was even talking smack. But it was in a friendly teasing way. After our second game he asked us, “Hey girls, did you win?” When we said, “no” he gave a full body sort of “shucks” motion that seemed to convey genuine disappointment and then was cheering for us as during our last game.

There is talk of practice sessions so that our team can be a little less pathetic but it seems a tad bit crazy to be having Dodgeball practice. Then again…

Me 'n Marvin

I have to say that I’m doing pretty well with the whole New Year’s resolution thing. Yes, I realize, that it has been a mere 19 days so far and that there are hundreds of days remaining, but 19 days is a substantial chunk of time and I’ve made great strides in furthering my resolution.

A brief recap for those readers who may not be reading EVERY SINGLE word of EVERY SINGLE post: Essentially the resolution is to be more social. At times I say that the resolution is to be more open, to make new friends, interact with more humans more often or to go on at least one “hot date” each month. To be perfectly honest, the last morphing of the resolution is really just motivated by a number of hot little tops coming into my possession this past fall. I don’t know when my last “hot date” was (have I ever had a “hot date”?) and it isn’t usually the sort of thing I’m looking for, but it seems such a shame to let the things go to waste. How sad to relegate them to the bottom of the drawer or a life of hidden undershirt-ed-ness? But even if I did have a “hot date” would I have the courage to wear one??? We may never know…

But back to the resolution. This means not retreating into my crosswords during lunch or dashing off directly after school every evening. It also means accepting invitations to do things and even – gasp – reaching out to people who seem interesting or fun or whatever-else-that-is-appealing. In the spirit of my resolution I’ve joined a Dodgeball league, invited myself to a stranger’s house to watch the Rose Bowl, allowed a massage school classmate do a session of an alternative form of healing with me, stayed late after school, reached out to strangers about playing tennis, gone onto Match.com (and met up with a nice and interesting person because of it) and have some tentative plans to go over to a classmate’s house. Tomorrow I plan to invite another fellow-student who lives near me to practice on each other. Not earth shattering, but I normally wouldn’t do any of those things, so it is progress.

The highlight, however, is my friend Marvin. I met Marvin a week or two ago during lunch. It was gorgeous out and I was consumed by a need to wander around outside and take my meal in the sunlight. I was sitting on one side of the street and he was sitting on the other. I didn’t really take much notice of him at first but after a while realized he was looking at me. We just sat there looking at each other for a good ten or fifteen minutes doing our respective noon-hour things before he sat up and said “hello.” I said “hello” back and he walked right over. We had a nice time. He is very attractive, listens really well and was quite affectionate (in a platonic, friendly sort of way.) I went out walking around again today and ran into him in the same place. He immediately came right over and sat down with me and I think we may try to meet up around lunch once a week or so when it is sunny out. That he is a cat doesn’t infringe on the depths of our friendship – in fact it probably deepens it. I took this picture of him with my phone the day we met.

Rain Changes

I went for a very lovely walk in the rain yesterday. Thursday and Friday I was in a strange mood. I was agitated, disgruntled, stressed, tired, and bored. This does not make sense. I am, after all, happy and excited about where I am right now. Meaning: it is great being in California for the winter, living alone after about eight months of constant company(!), starting my private massage practice, going to school, finding friends, working on a few creative projects, living in a beautiful house, surrounded by gorgeous nature and so much more. Every morning I do my yoga thing while the sunrises and acknowledge how lucky I am.

So…
Why can’t I sleep? My knee-jerk reaction to this is, “I don’t know why I feel like this.” That, however, is bullshit and I recognize it as bullshit immediately even as I think it or say it. I just don’t want to think about it, I just want it to go away (because I “should” be happy.) It is true that I have been quite consumed by a very intense two-week anatomy class that left almost no time for anything else. As a result, I wasn’t exercising or interacting with people socially. The anatomy class certainly was awesome, but I was losing the “balance” bit of life. That is a plausible explanation for the whole agitation/stress/fatigue/boredom thing. Throw in the fact that I was PMS-ing and I’ve got a great excuse.

In a bigger sense, however, I think the last few months are sorta catching up with me. I’ve made some rather huge life changes, gone on kick-ass adventures – domestic and international, roved about the country visiting friends and family and all with little or no down time between any one activity and the next. I haven’t exactly been able to process much of it and in my mind I keep avoiding questions about or contemplations of “hard” topics that I won’t subject you to here. (Or am I just avoiding them again?) When arriving in Penn Valley and finally finding myself faced with the solitude and space for quiet reflection I opted instead to listen to music, talk to friends about trivial matters, watch football, get a little nutso with the anatomy and so on. None of those things are bad – they just added to the clutter and confusion inside and were clearly diversionary tactics.

So Friday class ended and I had until mid-day Sunday (when my Level II massage training started) to “clear my space.” I was resolved to just let myself be quiet and reflective. What did I do instead? I took care of things that needed to be taken care of. I knitted. I watched a new TV show that related to my old job that I’ve wanted to see. I talked to friends I’ve wanted to catch up with. I decided I could let myself just relax on Friday and resolved anew to let myself be still on Saturday. Saturday dawned, however, and I cleaned the entire house, sorted and reorganized all my files, did multiple loads of laundry, re-configured the TV/Cable/DVD player because Comcast had screwed it up when they installed the cable, knitted some more, cooked intricate dishes, talked to some more people, and watched half of the first football game.

Then I went for a walk around 3. It was quite rainy but if it is rainy then it isn’t snowing and if it isn’t snowing then it is quite warm. I didn’t have any real destination. I had a vague hope of finding a park with some monkey bars so I could hang upside down, but the park I found didn’t have monkey bars and I ended up just wandering around toward things that looked interesting or down a street with a nice name (like Golden Trout.) The hills and lake through the rain were lovely and beautiful in a dreamy way. There were no people and very few animals out so except for an occasional car things were abnormally quiet – as if the rain had muffled the sound as well. While we aren’t at a very high altitude, the air had that mountain smell. Perhaps it is a combination of evergreens, sharp winter rain and the occasional wood-burning fireplace. I don’t know how long or far I walked (90 minutes maybe?) but I was thoroughly drenched by the time I got home. It was soothing to feel the rhythms of the rain as it wavered between a light sprinkle, a mist, a cold, horizontal rain, a moment of dry, and then back to rain. You couldn’t even think about thinking about it. And you didn’t need to, there was nothing you could do one way or the other and it didn’t matter.

I felt much better when I got back. Quieter, calmer, happier. It seemed fitting that about five minutes after I got home the clouds parted and the sun snuck across from the horizon to wash the hills with that evening golden light. There was even a great big rainbow.

All is not solved, by any means, but I feel much better.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Entropy always increases. In other words, it is easy to mess everything up and much harder to put it back into order.

This week provided an excellent illustrating example of this aspect of physics.

This winter, in exchange for free rent, I am charged with defending the homestead while the ‘rents winter in sunny Palm Springs. This involves some watering, re-staking the odd wind ravaged olive tree and other such miscellaneous tasks, but the primary responsibility is to fend off the invaders, ravagers and pillagers. Said invaders, ravagers and pillagers tend to take the form of turkeys and deer. At first it sounds somewhat quaint – particularly to those from less rural areas – to imagine those strange turkey creatures and little Bambi-types frolicking about. One soon realizes, however, that the deer have so infested the area that they are literally more common than squirrels and about a thousand times bigger. Then we have the issue of them providing themselves, for no extra charge, as traffic hazards and demolishers of any and all plant life. As for the turkeys… Loud, unattractive creatures that poop everywhere! I arrived to find the patio and patio furniture (including the table and barbeque), littered with the stuff. Strangely, the leader of the turkeys is a male peacock. He seems like a displaced noble sent to the wilds where he naturally rules the savages he finds there. You are probably thinking, “oh how cool!” But no, not how cool. Peacocks are even more aggressive and noisy and turkeys and they poop even more. Or at least, judging by what was laying around the patio they do.

It is my job to “dissuade” all these creatures from loitering about the premises. We used to use a bb-pistol but the neighbor told on us and we got in trouble. Now I generally go for the slingshot while Franko, my step-dad, goes for the horsewhip.

Wednesday morning dawned gorgeous. I did my morning yoga thing as the sun rose. I saw all sorts of sunrise splendor spreading across the valley, had a lovely breakfast and was just about to leave for class. Then the f-ing peacock showed up! He came right up to the glass door and seemed to look in (and mock me, I’m certain!) He has no respect, and no fear, but I was going to show him. I got my slingshot and some small rocks and went outside. He was really close to the house and just about 10 feet away from me so I couldn’t quite get an angle on him (I didn’t want to shot the house after all) but as he slowly meandered along I was able to get a relatively safe angle. Or so I thought. Being extra careful with my aim and barely putting any tension into the shot I aimed for the cocky peacock. In a freakish transcendence of the normal laws of physics the small rock hit the patio, ricocheted sharply to the right, and smacked right into the glass of a large French door window. The custom-made, expensive, fancy, large French door window. At first it seemed not-horrible. There was a dent or chip or something in the window, but it seemed okay (I could get that fixed, right?) About ten seconds later the entire plate shattered into approximately half a million pieces.

Ooops.

Turns out, though, that I won’t need to replace the entire door and that even though the whole thing was custom, the size of the glass is fairly standard. So it isn’t going to be as much to replace as I originally thought. It is still very expensive and I am still, officially, a bonehead, but I have sworn not to shoot the peacock with my slingshot. The turkeys and deer are still fair game – I’ll just be a teensy bit more careful.

Happy Gnu Year!

I’m not a huge fan of most New Year’s celebrations. I don’t particularly like staying up late (unless there is something worth staying up for), getting drunk or being around drunken people. It seems to me to be a great recipe for an absolutely awful start of the New Year. Throw in a dark and stormy night, drunks roaming the mountain highways, and a dearth of friends here in Penn Valley and it becomes even less appealing.

I do, however, like the idea of starting fresh and making changes. Like I have trouble making changes and need the pretense of January 1 to get me to shake things up! Seriously though, I am looking forward to 2006 and what it might bring. I feel a bit as though the changes of the last six or seven months have been about breaking away from old, frustrating, unhappy-making circumstances or patterns. I’ve had a little bit of time to tie off loose ends, exfoliate the old spirit and get in a better frame of mind so now I’m ready to make new things happen.

New things such as a new job, for instance. I’m still not sure exactly what, but have several ideas that are actually fairly concrete. I’m also going to be better about making friends. I often come across as friendly and outgoing and am even ridiculed when I explain my shy streak, but a shy streak I do have. I am resolved, however, to be more outgoing about making friends here, even though I’m only here for a few months. I’m also going to make the normal resolutions such as “do yoga at least 5 mornings a week,” “eat healthier” and so on, but those are rather boring resolutions.