Gaia Community: tinkonthebrink's Blog

Friday Five in the Kitchen

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:44:10 GMT

1) What is you favorite utensil?
my hands are very useful.
I have some wooden spoons I like too and these long cooking chopsticks and a pet spatula.

2) Do you like non-stick pans?
Ewwww.
No.

3) Have you ever made your own waffles or pancakes? (or do you like a simple cereal?)
Yeah, my worst experience was making some from the Thrive recipes - I don't eat wheat so I'm always looking for good alternatives and I love most of the recipes in this book, but seriously, did he really try making these things??? They were little piles of pudding. We ate them anyway. With spoons.

4) Do you use/ like cloth napkins, no napkins, paper, towels, or jeans? (it's okay either way ;)
Prefer cloth. Also like to lick my fingers. Sometimes will lick other people's fingers too.

5) What are you having for lunch, if you're not having lunch, then what's your favorite food? (or you can answer both)
Just had lunch a little while ago, miso soup with spinach, little tiny cubes of tofu, and scallions. I am a little addicted to miso.

Tags: friday five, food, kitchen, cooking, miso

What does personal freedom mean to you?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:15:16 GMT

It is so tempting, so many times a day, to pretend that whatever I'm experiencing was inflicted on me. The dog is driving me crazy, that really bad driver pissed me off, I'm happy because I got paid more than I expected. It came from somewhere and it's because of something and that something IS NOT ME, no, you can't make me be responsible for that! But in that whole Victor Frankl, even in a concentration camp there's that space where you choose your response kind of way, personal freedom is inescapable and it's identical at heart with personal responsiblity. You know that thing that everyone says and I have no idea if it's true but that thing about how the Chinese character for crisis is the same as opportunity? It should be true if it isn't. Anyway, it's just like that. It isn't that personal freedom and personal responsibility go together, it's that they are just one thing with two words stuck to it. And there isn't an option not to have it.
I am going for the world's record for run on sentences. What do you think?
My personal little NaNoWriMo - 50k words in one sentence...

Tags: Q&R, freedom, free, personal freedom, personal responsibility, Victor Frankl and me are getting married

Who is the most caring person you know?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:51:46 GMT

It seems to me that we're all built almost completely out of caring, maybe too much of it sometimes. What we care about varies from person to person and then we start caring about those differences and we get in big fights about it and have wars and do stupid things. Sometimes we let marketers and advertisers convince us that we need to care about their things and that we'll be happier by caring about those things but it isn't true. We invent religions to tell us what to care about and new age bookstores and fashion magazines. Some of us follow sports teams and care about them passionately - we just don't know what to do with the caring, there's so much of it, and we seem to need to put it somewhere. I think I'm in favor of a bit more apathy, kind of benign apathy, seconds on end of not being personally invested in anything in particular and letting all things just be what they are. Maybe I will start a religion of apathy - but of course, if the followers are any good at it at all they'll never show up.

Tags: Q&R, caring, compassion, care, kindness, Our Lady of Apathy

What, for you, has been the best thing about getting older?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:18:10 GMT

Don't you all have this fantasy about going back in time and getting a re-do with the benefit of what you know now? I mean, countless movies are based on this idea, it's gotta be pretty universal. Anyway, I know I have it. Sometimes I have the conversation that I wish I would have had with someone I haven't seen for years, if only I knew then what I know now. But the thing is, I'm still having the real-time conversations where I only know what I know now, no matter what age I am, and later on I'm sure I'm going to want a re-do for some of these too. That whole thing about how you can't step in the same river twice and all - I know by the time I get my other foot in it's all changed. So all in all, I think the best thing about getting older is continuing to be alive and getting to have more experiences, make more mistakes, have more imaginary conversations in the future where I tell myself how I could have been so much more clever in this moment, step into more rivers just that one time. It's just getting more days, more kisses, more joy, more sun on skin and chilly mornings and more warming up the cold blankets with body heat at night, more conversations and books to read and music to hear and more time to maybe learn to juggle or ride a unicycle. The best thing about getting older is the time involved, and everything that holds. Just more. I don't ever want to leave.

Tags: Q&R, age, aging, maturity

If you had to found a museum, what would it be about?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:59:13 GMT

Sticks and rocks and bits of dirt. Lost objects, found objects, battered seashells, torn clothing. Trees with funny shapes. Weeds. Sounds of thunder and wind blowing hard through leaves and rain falling. The sound of kittens purring and that way that hounds kind of talk-bark themselves into a good howl. Grey hairs and soft skin and lips. I want a museum dedicated to juicy warm lips. And hands, ones with spidery long fingers and little short plump ones and some with wrinkles and all with warmth, hands that do massages and piano playing and hands playing guitars and hand drums and knitting...maybe that's it, a museum dedicated to hands. Or maybe it's eyes - looking into them, looking out of them, batting eyelashes over them, all the different colors of them, the tears that come out of them, maybe it should be a museum dedicated to eyes. No, I think it really is about the sticks and the rocks and the bits of dirt. And the ability to see them and love them. That's what it is.

Tags: Q&R, museum, history, preservation

Do you consider yourself fortunate?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:08:51 GMT

Are you kidding me? I don't have to walk miles every day with a bucket to haul unclean water back to my family. I don't have malaria. I have more than enough food - I have to be conscious of not eating too much! I have a washer and dryer and changes of clothes and electricity and a computer and high speed internet and a car and a bicycle. I have a great relationship with a wonderful partner. I have lovely (sometimes ornery) animals who live with us. I have a home. I have space for a garden. I have a dogwood tree in my backyard and daffodils that come out in the spring and moss grows on the ground all by itself and other than the poison ivy hedge growing along one of the fences, a great living space.
Fortunate implies some other option - for someone to be fortunate, there has to be a concept of unfortunate. Some people are truly unfortunate in their circumstances, others in their choices, and lots of people a combination of both. Some of the people who are walking miles for dirty water may be happier day to day than someone else living in the suburbs and shopping at Ikea. Not that the unhappy Ikea shoppers would cheer up if they switched places, but there is something a little subversive about having enough to want too much.
Some people just default to unhappy - like the grinch, their hearts are just a few sizes too small. That's an unfortunate circumstance, but also maybe a choice. Well, I hope it's a choice, because then they have options, right? I don't want to think that the unhappy people are stuck that way, like the way my mom said if I made a face it would stick. Except she was sort of right I think - if you hold your face the same way all the time, eventually it does stick. I think unhappiness is like that too: if you look at the faces of old people you can see who got stuck in unhappiness, in the idea that they are just unfortunate, who held their face that way for too long and it stuck, who hung on to their miseries.
I am fortunate that I kind of default to happy even in the worst times, and that I have this wonderful life, and that I refuse to take that for granted or cling to miseries. A good combination of choice and circumstance.

Tags: Q&R, luck, good fortune

How do you define power?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:00:50 GMT

Krissy's niece (does that make her my niece-in-law?) got in a bunch of trouble today. She's 14 and not allowed to "date" yet. Whatever that means, and as if you can prevent any part of that from occurring. So, her mom found these sexually explicit emails from a boy on a myspace account that mom told her she could only have if mom had access to it.
My first thoughts here are, you don't have to show an ID, you just have to say you're 18, so why in the world would you give your parent that kind of power? She seems like a bright girl, am I missing something? Does she actually need a worker?
And then my next thought is, is mom trying to train her to be sneakier and a better liar? Because, really, that is the only option.
I rarely give other people the opportunity to make decisions for me. Even when I was fourteen, I had figured that out. On the other hand, I don't want to make decisions for other people - I'm a control freak about my own life but not anyone else's. Once in a while those boundaries are fuzzy - if someone posts crappy pictures of you, are they yours or theirs? Well, obviously, if they don't like you or care how you feel, that's out of your control zone and you just have to let that go. What about medical care...how much research are you required to do to know what is really happening to you? For me, the answer is, as much as I can possibly do. Not something I'm trusting about.
There is some distinction between power over and empowerment, but basically - for me at least - personal power and empowerment hinges on self-responsibilty. If I screw that up or let it slip through my fingers, that's on me.

Tags: Q&R, power

How often do you shift gears in life?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:09:36 GMT

"Do you leap between major life changes every six months or so, or do your shifts happen on a longer cycle?"

Are you kidding?
Okay, I will just about only drive a stick shift, with the exception of Krissy's Prius which does not count as it is not a car but some kind of amusement park ride. I'm amazed I don't drive off the road looking at all the cool little displays. If I shouldn't talk on my cell while driving then Priuses (what's the plural of Prius? Prii?) should be illegal.
Anyway, the point here is that I shift gears regularly. Six months? Are you crazy Siona?
Last week our hot water heater did some crazy thing, of course in the middle of the night, and we woke up to burning plastic smell and spent half the night trying to figure out what was about to catch on fire and since then have had no hot water source. It's not as bad as it seems like it would be. Think camping. Except we have places to shower that do in fact have hot water, just not at home. Heat water to wash dishes, miss washing my hands with warm water expecially now that it's getting chilly and the water is very cold, but no big deal. We're waiting to figure out what we're going to do, trying to decide between the most energy efficient electric replacement or solar but there are going to be some drawbacks in the winter with that or some other options Albert has suggested but for now we're just camping in our house.
(For those of you who don't know me, Albert is our housemate. He is brilliant and crazy and hardly ever here. He used to blog here but has lately been absent. From Gaia I mean. Well, home too but that's his usual.)
Same week, after my computer blew a power supply, Krissy's computer blew out the vid card when the hot water heater did its thing. So now we are sharing just the laptop which I kind of like as the status quo. I haven't been gaming lately so a laptop is perfectly adequate and not having the other computers clears out a lot of space. My desk is gone now and I don't think I want it back. Crisis/opportunity.
Does anyone know if that's a real thing, the crisis/opportunity story? What I've heard is that the chinese character for crisis is the same as for opportunity. But if it's just some myth that's okay, it's still true. I say it to myself everytime something blows up or stops working or gets in my way - crisis/opportunity. There is always an opportunity. Just shift gears.
And it doesn't take a crisis of course. I shift gears hundreds of times a day. I don't multitask. I don't think multitasking is actually possible, it's just barely paying attention to too many things, so I prefer to unitask and shift gears.
I think this is a good analogy to driving a car: "How often do you shift gears?" Whenever you need to. Not before and not later. Just when you need to.
Oh, and don't ride the clutch.

Tags: Q&R, transformation, change, life

Who do you wish you had more compassion for?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:57:58 GMT

Now see, here's where I run into a problem: if I really wished I had more compassion then I wouldn't be so bitchy about certain things in the first place, now would I?

Here is an incomplete list of my compassion-free zone: bad drivers, drunk drivers, smokers, the morbidly obese, morbidly obese smoking drunk bad drivers, people who wear polyester clothing, and people who complain all the time. Just for starters. It's all I can do to keep myself from telling you why it's totally reasonable for me to feel this way so I think compassion is still a ways off.

One of the morbidly obese folks in my universe seems to eat nothing but pancakes and french toast. Another eats only junk food and fast food - and she smokes cigarettes. Both of them are constantly injured and ill, and when I say constantly, that is not an exaggeration. Even if I had started out feeling some compassion it would have run dry a while back.

I'm sure the Dalai Lama would not be so bitchy, but he's an exceptionally nice person. There you have it.

Tags: Q&R, compassion, empathy, love

What's the most soothing or calming music you know?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:11:34 GMT

I listen to shakuhachi flute music a lot and when it's playing in the house the animals all get very calm and I find that it's easier to concentrate and things get done in a more fluid way than they otherwise would.

I don't play any musical instrument and I don't read music. It feels like a form of illiteracy to me but there you have it.

When I worked at a Waldorf school all the lower grade kids had pentatonic flutes, which sound good no matter what you do. I like forgiving instruments. And hand drums, and shakers. I like those a lot.

Also sometimes I like to listen to Brian Eno ambient stuff as background music - I think the music that's going on creates an affect (and an effect as well) in my life and it's so easy to discount how pervasive it is. If you've ever seen a movie with and without the music background you know what I mean here. How would you know those basement stairs are scary territory without the music? What if the soundtrack was circus music instead? (That would make it really funny when the zombies come out, wouldn't it?) Music has so much power. I kind of wish that in real life the scary music would start playing when I'm about to do something really stupid, but so far that hasn't been at all helpful. Dang.

Tags: Q&R, music, soothing, calming, peace

leaping back on the wagon

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:59:13 GMT

I have fallen off the meditation practice wagon lately, and was reminded by some tweets recently from someone I actually know from Zaadz/Gaia that it's something I value too much to let it slide the way I have been. Through one of his posts I found this fascinating post on Chade-Meng Tan's blog about an in-house program at Google called SIY, and through that I found this awesome video presentation by Phillipe Goldin (who is at Stanford and also a longtime meditator) on the neuroscience of emotions with a lot of scientific information on the actual brain-changing effects of meditation. (Is that enough hyperlinks for you? Wait, there's another one coming, I can feel it.)
And now I have a little bit of a crush on Meng, by the way.
I'm also currently reading Train Your MInd, Change Your Brain (Sharon Begley) on the same subject and it's completely fascinating.

Tags: Q&R, spirituality, practice, Cheng-Meng Tan, SIY, meditation

Do you believe in guides or angels?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:41:25 GMT

A very short while ago I would have said that was just a silly idea people make up to comfort themselves. I've always been a big Richard Dawkins fan, if that makes it all clearer. And I still am - I love nice, clear logic, well-presented, and I know how desperately people try to fool themselves.

But I also know for sure that the universe is full of things we don't understand and can't even recognize because we've pushed them out of our consciousness about the time we found out santa was fiction and the tooth fairy was mom and nobody is going to pull that stuff over on us again.

The past several weeks have been full of little disasters in my life - you know, computer not working, laptop not wanting to stay connected, miscommunications, flat tires, you get the picture. And I get this nudge to check - and this will make me sound even wackier to Richard - whether it's mercury retrograde. Yes indeed it is. Ends today and is back to full normal rotation early October. The site I happen to choose randomly is really well written, with a nice perspective that mercury retrograde isn't just about those little disasters, but an opportunity to revisit things.
So instead of getting frustrated with all these things, I've been thinking, well, what led up to this point and how can I redirect my life moving forward? Nice shift.

The flat tire was actually Krissy's as she was leaving for work. She called me and said she was pulling over into a church parking lot and would I come help her change the tire. I get there and we move everything out of the hatch of the prius and open the utility space and...there's no doughnut tire. She never had any occasion to check before. We are standing there looking at it blankly when this man drives up and says "can I help you?" and I say, "well, probably not unless you have a doughnut tire for our car because it isn't there." He says "No, but I have a tire repair kit and a compressor. I'm the pastor of this church and I have a garage out back." He takes off the tire, fixes it, puts it back on, checks the pressure on all the tires and adjusts it. Then he asks Krissy what field she works in (she had mentioned it was her company car). I had previously mentioned that I work with a little girl - did not mention that she had autism - and Krissy said she worked with people with disabilities. It turns out his church is opening a school for children with autism. It's already approved and they're getting the funding.

And I won't even tell you about the dream I had last night because then I will truly seem pretty crazy, but I'll just say, the world is more complicated and interconnected, and life is full of things, that aren't explained by what we think we know, and some of the things we know aren't easily explained either.

Tags: Q&R, guides, angels, wisdom

What makes you feel most free?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:34:32 GMT

I think I don't understand this question. Freedom implies freedom from something and that seems pointless to me before I even get started. Freedom from what I've decided has its hold on me? Freedom from myself? I don't know how to let go of all of it and not care anymore. If I jumped out of an airplane I would feel free for a few minutes, but if I were wearing a parachute I would immediately start thinking "geez, I hope this thing opens" and then there would be much less freedom right away. I create the absence of freedom for myself and I think that serves me in the day to day way. The care and the planning and the anticipation keep me alive from one day to the next. I take care of a life I love, people and animals and gardens and sweet things I love and treat nicely, and I have no desire to be free of them. One day, in one moment, all of it will be gone for me and I hope that in that moment I feel free and jump without a parachute. But until then, I'm sticking with my caretaking and the lack of freedom that comes with it. I think if you get to be here in a body you trade off freedom for the experience and I'm all about the experience of this.

Tags: Q&R, freedom, free, independence

What would make your day perfect?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:30:56 GMT

Once again this year I have not made it to Burning Man. And now that I've moved about as far away as I could without drowning, I might not ever get there. But there is this thing that happens with festivals, the real ones, the ones where crazy people show up and build impossible things and create rituals out of thin air and there's drums and darkness and you drive there or maybe it's too far and you have to fly but there's this anticipation while you're enroute. You're going somewhere where all bets are off, anything can happen, and everyone who is travelling to this destination at that same point in time is pouring energy into what's going to be possible that never seemed possible before. Anything can happen and usually it does and it's amazing.

What I want for this perfect day is to remember every moment that everything and anything is possible and that I can make magic out of thin air and that it's a good idea to be friends with a hand drum or maybe a little shaker that allows for dancing and sound all at the same time because that's the best sort of multitasking. I want to remember that we own our house so if we want to paint a crazy painting on the outside we're allowed, or maybe add antlers to the roof or oh my god, why haven't I built a fire pit in the back yard? I want to remember that everything is possible and then make crazy things happen that I never expected or thought of ahead of time. I want to be surprised and to surprise myself and surprise other people too.

What would make this day and every day perfect is to find what I never expected to find, to do what I never expected to do, to make this little envelope of being the person I am a little bigger, to grasp a little more of the amazing universe around me and to love all of that while it's happening. I want to live in an amazing festival every single day and I think that would be quite a nice day. Perfect maybe.

Tags: Q&R, vision, ideal, moment, day, burning man, festivals, drums

How can you become more confident?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:45:45 GMT

Ummm, stop thinking about yourself and about questions like "how can you become more confident.?".

Look outside instead of only navel gazing and whatever you do, stop reading self-help books. Build a compost pile or a bookshelf or a crazy looking dress. Eat something good for you that you also like. Have more sex, even if you do it by yourself. Wear comfortable shoes that you love. Read a children's book. Write a children's book. Get a llama or a goat or do something totally outrageous and wrong. Paint your car, by hand, really badly. Wear colors that clash. Get a tiara. Decide that you love the people you love whether or not they love you back. Take big bites. Do pushups. Play with fire - poi twirling is a good starting point for that. Learn to juggle or walk on stilts.

Don't ever ever ever ask yourself "how can I become more confident?". Totally a kiss of death kinda question, that one.

Tags: Q&R, confidence, self-confidence

the maze

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:50:13 GMT

About a million years ago I was at my friend Dani's house, and she said "I have an invitation to this party" and it was Halloween so of course I scavenged through her daughter's dressup box and I went as the bad fairy - tattered black wings, torn up tights, a little short skirt, a denim jacket, I was set. My friend spent the night out in her car talking to her twenty something boyfriend and I went to this party where I knew no one. Someone said, "have you been in the maze yet?" and that was it for me. The maze was this incredible thing, pitch dark like where you can't even see your own hand in front of your face, crawl-through sized, and that first year I didn't know to bring knee pads. This kid offered to give me a guided tour of the maze and I managed to ditch him as soon as we went in. It took me an hour and a half to find my way out and then I went right back in again. I love love love playing in the dark. I love being in the world when most people are sleeping, I love hidden things and mysteries and surprises. I love everything that hides in the dark and catches me off guard. I love night, very much, and it loves me right back.

Tags: QaR, night, evening, the maze, darkness, surprise

What's the best thing about being you?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:05:49 GMT

Definitely the superpowers.

Do you know I can balance on one foot? My hands can do these amazing things - type really fast, knit, purl, make artwork, catch lightning bugs - not all while standing on one foot usually. I can learn things, forget things, remember things, find things, lose things and think about it all. It's pretty incredible, but true.

I can put words and ideas together in ways my dogs and cats can't even imagine. But they're better at other things.
There was some study recently that concluded that dogs have the equivalent of a human two to three year old intellect, because of the number of words they understand and because dogs can apparently count. As if a dog's intelligence is measured by completing human tasks. I thought it was a very funny idea. Species-ism.

I have fabulous dreams at night and wake up and write (actually type) them down. What an amazing gift. I can play card games, play scrabble, backgammon, and video games. I'm kind of a freak for video games. I can read books!!!! Wow, that one is amazing. I can take photographs and solve problems and learn languages. I can draw things and paint things and build things and fix things and sometimes break things too.

I do love the superpowers.

Tags: QaR, personality, character, life, self

How do you deal with the unknown?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:55:51 GMT

It seems so silly to assume I know something, so smug and blind. Because I've been here before, this time it's the same? More unprepared then than if I were lost somewhere I'd never seen before. At least then I would understand that it's all new instead of blindsiding myself with my own assumptions.

This moment, never this moment before now. Anything can happen. And then another moment. I can change my mind. The world can shift around me. A tree that's stood for years can suddenly crack and fall across the road. It's always unknown and whatever stories I tell myself about what I already know are like wearing sunglasses at night.

We are always feeling our way through the dark and twisty mysteries, even while we make rules and tell ourselves how much we know and try to read the map right side up. It's only the real thing, the exploring and playing in the dark, that really matters.

Tags: Q&R, unknown, mystery, uncertainty

this is my life today

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:17:45 GMT

I am obsessively listening to/ dancing to/ playing to Azam Ali - she is the voice of Vas, for anyone who doesn't already know that, and Niyaz and Axiom of Choice...I'm totally in love with her voice and with hearing words I don't understand and loving the mystery of it, hearing voice just as sound. The music is so sensual and liquid and lovely. I've listened to her forever, but this has been a revisiting and I think everyone should hear her voice in their dreams.

Reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and also in love with that. This is an amazing and mesmerizing little book, the kind that just sticks with you and haunts you in a very sweet way. Highly recommended.

And spending my days with my little autistic friend and trying to get something done for our house each day and thinking about food - my favorite foods right now are fried plantains from this fabulous El Salvadorean restaurant here and always uni, although the last time I went to our fave sushi place the rice was too sweet and I hope they fix that. I can forgive them once. But just once.

In the summer I mostly only like salad and smoothies but I know that pretty soon it will be soup season. I can feel it coming on, winter squash and root veggies and lots of garlic, that's the essence of fall. Today it's supposed to hit 90 here, but I can feel fall falling. It's hovering out there, standing on tiptoe and balanced precariously on the hot ending of summer. The plants know too - they're moving toward their last show off moments of the season. I love the transition times.

I'm at the near end of working full time or more than full time hours over the summer. Krissy has been working more than full time since, well, always. I'm looking forward to school kicking in again and having a little more time for all the things that have slipped through the cracks lately - I have a stockpile of fun art things I've been doing with Little Bit and billions of ideas and right now I can barely get the animals fed and our lives balanced on the head of a pin, but in just a minute time will open up again. I am counting the days until school starts, and this comes from someone who homeschooled her own child and I'm sorry but oh my goodness, I'm glad school is starting.

I like how things keep turning over and over again.

Tags: life, books, music, fall, wonder

What are you comfortable with?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:30:04 GMT

I don't think I'm much of a comfort seeker.
I loved working at the nature center here. Initially I just worked with the herps and even though I've never been a person with an aversion to snakes and lizards and things that creep and crawl and skitter, I had to come up against how different and foreign they seemed to me, especially when handling them. I fell in love with this one corn snake who loved me back and it was delightful. I love that overcoming of barriers.
Next we added the raptors and then the smaller predators - a red tail hawk, a great horned owl, and then the foxes, the coyote - and with the raptors part of the gig was picking up whatever was left of the food they'd been given and weighing it, to compare to the original weight and monitor their food intake. Bits of chicks, parts of rats, some mice leftovers, all pretty oogey by the next morning and I have an aversion to things that smell bad. The great horned owl hissed at me for a year every time I went into his mew before he finally agreed that I was alright. The red tail hawk was a fast friend right off the bat, but she would fly past my head so close her wings would hit my face or shoulder and then sit on a branch next to me, staring at me. This is not an ordinary experience.
I loved the challenges to my assumptions, I loved learning about these animals, I loved overcoming my own hesitations, and although I've never gotten over the aversion to bad smells I loved going right on in spite of that.
I don't think I have a strong desire to be comfortable.
We bought this house that needs an enormous amount of work, we have an entirely unreasonable number of animals, I have a list of projects that goes on for so long I can't see an end to it. I don't seem to pursue comfort.
I suppose possibly I'm comfortable with being a little frustrated, which seems contradictory. I don't seem to be comfortable with everything going along easily and being familiar.
I do prefer fabrics that feel good, cottons and silks and hemp, but I also like scratchy woolies so no, not even there. Hmmm. Foods? No, I'm not a comfort food sort, I like very spicey or very odd foods, bitter foods like raw greens, peppers so hot they make me cry, and I can sit and eat a lemon as if it were an orange.
Oh, I've got it! Footwear. I prefer barefoot but second choice is earth shoes, which are my absolute fave and TOTALLY comfortable. There, I'm comfortable with my feet. Knew there must be something.

Tags: QaR, comfortable, acceptance