invasion of the mole people

going outside to play is just so much better if you have to wear specialized clothing for it.

i think i have mentioned elsewhere that i am a gear weenie. so. polypro base layers: tights, two shirts, one midweight, one fleece. wool socks, hiking boots, snowpants.

not just snowpants; they have to have suspenders, snow skirts, slashpads, and reinforced butt and knees. gaiters, of course. the kind that hook over your boots like spats. very stylish.

soft wool hat, soft neck gaiter. glove liners. gloves with idiot loops, rubberized palms, and gauntlet length with drawstings -you guessed- to keep out the snow.

jacket: this is my geocaching jacket, but it doubles as my digging in the snow jacket, which is pretty much what winter geocaching is all about, anyway. it also has a snowskirt. the idea is to keep the snow out. it's amazing how much happier you are in super cold weather if the elements simply can't get in.

so it takes me twenty minutes to get dressed, but once i'm outside, i am READY.

and what am i doing outside? building a really spiffy snow cave. if you are, like i am, extremely claustrophobic, this is a fun winter activity, espectially when you get to the point in your construction that you have to get ALL THE WAY IN to dig, but you don't yet have enough room to really move around.

and of course the entrance has to be teeny. you have to go in and out on your belly.

half of my nightmares involve being in some small space where the only exit is small enough i have to go on my belly.

if you are claustrophobic you can have extra fun with this activity if you use your imagination and pretend you have been swallowed by an avalanche and have to dig space around you so you can breathe.

my favorite tool for digging right now is my really spiffy dakine two-handled snow-scoop. if i think of it later, i'll take a picture of it for the slideshow.

slideshow, you say?

of course. 

it'll update with the construction.

happy new year!

here's my hat; my other hat.

i went to first night burlington last night, which i always like to do. last year of course i'd nearly frozen to death the week before and had to stay home, but aside from the church service (stunningly beautiful) and the fireworks (provincial), i just love to walk up and down the streets.

you have to understand that i have the full rack of first night buttons, which this year total twenty-seven. i wear them on a scarf draped around my neck, like a stole, almost. people stop me on the streets to take my picture.


last night i was also giving out copies of my Christmas album to random strangers, which is kind of fun. it isn't really an anonymous generosity because there i am in the flesh, but there's no contact information on it, so they couldn't write to tell me about it if they wanted to. it's just a surprise moment of good humor and random gift-giving.

there ought to be more of that in this world; it brightens up the place.

new shoes

ok, so i got them a couple of months ago, but wasn't caught up with my projects and didn't write to tell you.

my old running shoes wore out, and at the end of the summer season i got a very handy coupon for a spiffy new pair of salomon XT wings.

even though you wouldn't know it today (twelve degrees and wearing extra clothes) i'm running a little faster in them; a sixteen minute mile on average.

before you go all unimpressed, yes, i AM aware that decent runners can do eight minute miles and hardly break a sweat. even in good condition i'm a sucky runner, so sixteen minute miles are a big step up for me.

here's my hat!

flask Christmas

presenting for the year selections from the flask Christmas album: daily download available from now until 1 january.

flask Christmas

bread

yesterday was the 21st of december, the day of the winter solstice, the day that the days bein to grow longer again.

and i can really use more daylight.

i decided to spend the day baking; i have a bread that i bake on the solstice day or when i'm asking special blessings. i call it "apple raisin spice" but it's more than that. it's heavily fruited with -yes- apples and raisins, but also with apricots and plums and sometimes currants. instead of water, i use for the liquid ingredients apple cider and dark amber maple syrup. the zest of a lemon is in there, along with cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger, and a little black pepper.

all of these ingredients carry the traditional symbolism of ancient kitchen magic: they ask blessings of protection, prosperity, health, happiness, and love.

and so the baking of the bread is a prayer offering. with every added ingredient i think of what it symbolizes, and with evey turn of the dough, stirring or kneading, i consider carefully the prayers i wish to carry to those who will eat the bread.


it is hearty bread, heavy, substantive, and sweet.

so may you have what is substantial and sweet.

three views of a punchbowl

when i unwrapped it, i thought it was a small and ornate punchbowl.

what it turned out to be makes a lot more sense; you know perhaps that i am a lighter of candles.






when i say "i'll light a candle for you", i mean it. sometimes what i mean by "i'll light a candle for you" is "i'll keep a candle burning for you night and day until i know that you are safe."



like everyone else in my family, when my sister does anything, she does it to excess. right now that means that if it's glass, she'll paint it.

so i have this cool new bowl to hold my candle now. today i took some pictures of it; one so you can see the paint, one so you can see the glow, and the third one i just like because the light spreads and grows.


lighting up the darkness, you know?

wind

i kept watching bits of other people's homes go by my window, and decided to park my car on the leeward side of the building.




of course i had to go outside and take pictures, because i'm insane. a few miles upwind they clocked winds officially at 88 MPH, and i'll tell you that fully braced against it, i wasn't able to stand.

preliminary sketches

what you have here is kind of my life in miniature: preliminary sketches for one of the paper discs i'm working on (which are supposedly a secret, but if you know where to look, you know where to look), but behind that is a sketch for a new song that popped halfway into my head this week, called "history of the world in brief", and beside that the notes for the hundred or so geocache logs i'm working on.

history of the world in brief:

i don't like you and you don't like me
content in our hostility
we'll act as if we're not insane
to wish to do the other pain

until we meet some other guys
that you and i can both despise
and we'll hold it like some precious gem
as we join our hands to
beat
on
them.

workmanlike approach

daniel pinkwater once told of a year in which he required himself to turn out one genuine piece of art each day before he turned in for the night.

he was not required according to his rules to do anything but make one good print, but this is a disciplined way to go about making art.

the thing about being an artist is that it's easy to sit around an wait until you have a golden inspiration, but quite another thing altogether to crank out work every day. if you go at it with the daily requirement, you don't always get a masterpiece, but you're exercising your craft, keeping your hand and eye in practice, keeping your work current.

so i'm working on a similar plan. i can't tell you what i'm up to because if you knew what i was working on i'd have to have you killed, but every day i turn out one new design.

some days, like today, i also make new music because i'm a composer and i'm working on my new album, songs nobody loves.

stay tuned.

pulling up stakes

last week i went out to catamount to do some trail work.

the trails are closed, but not if you're working.

pulling up stakes

they'd just hosted two cyclocross races and a collegiate mountain bike race, so there were a lot of trail markings that needed to be pulled in.

fall races are mostly on the hillside or in the meadow, so once they're mown they have to be taped off which means a bajiliion stakes get hammered into the ground and hung with flagging tape to mark the course.

in other places the course is marked by lots of those little flags you stick into the grass.

the thing is that when the races are over, someone has to go out and take down all the tape, pick up all the little flags, and pull up the stakes. the pack basket only hold so much tape no matter how hard you jam it in there, so it takes me seven trips back and forth to the barn, which isn't much of a bother since the weather is nice and i need the exercise anyway.

i gather the stakes in piles, leaving them on trails that are easy to get to by four-wheeler, and i mark each pile with one upright stake and a streamer of tape. little flags, if present, are put neatly under a few of the stakes, to keep them from blowing away in case there's a storm.

besides the happiness of getting exercise and being useful, i am also wildly attracted to the idea that if i finish all the prep work in time, i will get to drive the four-wheeler to haul in the stakes, which are heavy.

wooo-hee!

tickticktickticktick

ok, so i'm getting ready to leave the house to do a little light trail work and go to the pharmacy and then to a nice dinner at a restaurant for my brother-in-law's birthday ad for some reason as i pass the mirror in the bathroom i lift my shirt up a little and

-what's this?-

i don't recall having an angry-looking purple welt there...

and i'm trying to get a good look at it, but it's on one of those pieces of real estate along your flanks that you can't really see and can't really reach and i'm trying all sorts of contortions and mirrors and i still can't get a good look, but it looks like it might have legs.

now, i've had a bunch of tick bites and picked off countless ticks before they bite, and one of the things about the legs is that they move, which is what makes them so creepy.

typically, they bite, they dig in, they feed, and then they drop off to lay eggs. this one, apparently, has died WHILE DEEPLY EMBEDDED IN MY FLESH, so that's kind of icky, and later on i will get around to wondering why it dies there; i mean, have you ever tried to kill a tick? they're like, bombproof. you have to squeeze HARD.

and i figure that the last time i might have picked up a tick would have been monday, so it's been there four days at least, and i'd have had to have picked it up in the adirondacks, where supposedly they don't have ticks.

oddly, the last embedded tick i had, i got in the adirondacks, where they supposedly don't have ticks.

somebody is lying.

so i call my doctor right away, because this thing has to come out and considering how long it's been in me, i'm going to need doxy. (do you remember when "doxy" referred to a woman of questionable virtue and not a strong antibiotic?)

and they tell me they'll have the triage nurse get right back to me, but nobody calls for an hour and a half so i call them back and it turns out they don't think it's important to return my call because they have nobody available to see me today and i should go to the walk-in care clinic.

well, that's nice. ya think it would have been useful to call me and let me know?

so i put together my things and head out to walk-in care, and i am not really prepared for what i find there. it's not quite matthew brady, but there's a lot of misery there.

the guy at the front desk barely looks at me and asks "chest pains? cough? fever?"

uh, no. embedded tick. probably infected. probably not lyme, but dirty, you know?

well, it's going to be a long wait, he tells me.

how long?

a couple of hours. he tells me to have a seat in the waiting area.

i am not comfortable in there. the place is jam-packed with people who have the flu. our area actually has a cluster of real live H1N1 cases, so they're all suited up with masks and such, but they're all coughing and feverish.

i'm all, like, GET ME OUTTA HERE! THIS PLACE IS FULL OF SICK PEOPLE!

but i'm going to need the doxy.

the guy calls me up to be checked in. he notices that i do not touch the desk or any other part of the furniture if i can't help it. he offers me some of his disinfectant, which i take.

i return to the waiting area. i feel very much out of place.

see, now i've felt pretty complacent about H1N1 and every other flu or cold because i have a robust immune system and i live alone. not alone in the city; alone in the country.

flu epidemic? i don't care. i don't come into contact with people.

but here i am at the hospital, surrounded by people with flu. and you just KNOW that some of them have H1N1, not that i care about strain.

i mean, i haven't had a cold in so long that i don't even remember if it was four or five years ago.

the intake nurse comes to get me, and i express to her my tredipation at having been plunked down in the middle of all these sick people. i mean, just take the tick out and give me the doxy already. it's not very complex.

she suggests that maybe i might have a friend take the tick out. ok, fine, but even if i could get a friend to take it out properly, i'll still need the doxy.

at this point it becomes apparent that even though it is not yet three in the afternoon, i am going to miss my five-thirty dinner reservations with my family.

i am sent back to the waiting area, but i ask the guy at the desk if i might do my waiting outside, where there isn't quite so much plague floating around in a closed space.

he says sure, and goes so far as to suggest that i might wait in the main lobby (just around the corner), where typically they do not allow people with visible symptoms to hang out.

fine. i make myself comfortable there.

and i wait.

and wait.

i call my mom, to explain why i'm going to be late to dinner. she says that they'll stall if they can, and they'll order for me, which ought to give me a little extra time.

somewhere just before five i get impatient. i have read the end of one book and made a good start on a second. now i get up and start pacing.

and finally someone comes to get me.

"i'll give you a gown and come back when you're ready."
"i'm ready", i say, pulling off my shirt and dumping it on a nearby chair.

o...k...

so the guy comes to take the tick out and he starts to make friendly chitchat but i cut him short, saying that i'm already going to be late for a dinner reservation, so we keep it pretty much to business. he gets most of the dead tick out, telling me not to worry about the parts left in; what's there is buried pretty deep and my body, he says, will push it out just fine.

he disappears to write the scrip, and just this last part takes twenty minutes.

seventeen minutes later i am at the restaurant, and the moment i sit down the waiter puts my plate in front of me, and what has been ordered for me is fabulous, so that goes a long way.

but what i want to know is this: why did the tick die? why not feed and drop off, like they're supposed to? is there something toxic in my blood? is one of my medications fatal to ticks?

that'd be cool.

a day on the road

out on the road there's a routine to adhere to, both because peregrination demands it, and because a routine makes it easier to manage the many details of "stuff" that has to be tended to.

so.

for your amusement, i'll try to reconstruct my typical day for you, in handy list form:

waking

trying to figure out where i am (the better i have slept, the less likely i am to know my location or orientation.)

waking prayer (if i can conclude my prayer without lapsing back into sleep, i get up.)

move "downstairs" into the driver's seat, leaving bedding open and unfolded.
turn on car and check temperature. if there is frost or much condensation, the car is left running until these clear up.

put on shoes, which are located on driver's side floor.

move driver's seat to daytime position, suitable for driving.

remove various objects from top of closed computer and move them to day positions: unplug earbuds from ipod and roll them into their case, which goes in the front pocket of the blue bag, on the passenger's side floor. power cords not presently being used go into cord bag. food items not consumed during sleep replaced in their proper bags. wrappers from food items consumed in sleep put in trash bag. cell phone located (it's somewhere in the bed) and placed with ipod in center console. water bottles (2) put in daytime positions, one handy and one not. if a pizza box is present, it moves to the back seat awaiting final repositioning.

open and plug in computer, replacing appropriate power cords into appropriate outlets. be sure to wedge the door over the power converter open so it won't overheat and blow a fuse.

plug in ipod to charge.

emerge from driver's side door.

open driver's side rear door.

move green food bag and green kitchen bag to temporary location.

remove breakfast drink from cooler and place it in cupholder.

zip up cooler.

move cooler from the ground beside the car to its daytime position behind the driver's seat, on top of the map bag.

replace the green bags around the cooler.

open tailgate and other car doors.

previous day's laundry is sorted. outer layers clean enough to wear again are left on the left side of the cargo space. dirty laundry is put in the laundry bag.

at back of car, strip off any shirts worn during the night.

put on a clean bra and then put the bottom layer, short-sleeve shirt back on.

other shirts still clean enough for sleeping are buried in the rear of the cargo space, to the far right.

shirt(s) appropriate for the day's weather are selected and pulled on.

tights or other leggings worn in sleep are removed and put with sleeping shirts.

pants (and long johns, if cold enough) are selected and applied.

pocket items (lip balm, pens, folding money and such) taken from dash and put in pockets.

sleeping hat is removed and put in the pocket on the back of the passenger's seat.

daytime hat is recovered and put on.

change from soft shoes to today's hiking boots.

a jacket (raingear or standard geocaching jacket) may be put on at this or any other time, as needed.

stove disassembled and parts stowed in green kitchen bag.

computer turned on.

bedding folded up. pillows covered.

pizza box, if present, is moved to top of bedding just behind passenger's seat.

laundry and clothing bags are redistributed to daytime positions, spread across back of car.

towel(s) spread out over gear bags to dry.

drive or walk to nearest toilet. at any point where gas or groceries are purchased, also make use of available restroom. do not buy anything from businesses without public restrooms.

drive to nearest wifi access point, check emails. if no open network is nearby, this step may be skipped until one is available. this action may also be repeated as the day goes on.

select day's first destination.

while driving, drink breakfast.

geocache. or not, depending on availability of distractions. mostly geocache.

at 1000h, stop for morning prayer. if time of prayer arrives while driving, stop at nearest convenient place. if no place is available (interstate driving comes to mind) turn off radio or other distraction and have prayer while driving. if time and place permit, read a page or two of scripture.

if breakfast beverage bottle is empty, (i only drink half at a time) it goes to trash. if not empty, replace in cooler.

resume geocaching.
at some point in the day the radio s being used instead of the ipod, unplug ipod and use outlet to charge flashlight.

prayer at noon, followed by

lunch. if a cold pizza is present, two slices are eaten. if a pizza is not present, a bowl of cheerios is eaten.

if eating cheerios:

assemble spiffy origami cereal bowl.

pour cereal (two kinds) and milk.

find spork. not the usual kind, but the advanced kind, with spoon on one end and fork/knife combo on other.

when done eating, pour out leftover milk, unfold and rinse bowl and utensil, repacking the kitchen and food bags.

resume caching.

afternoon prayer at 1400.

resume caching.

evening prayer at 1700, followed by

dinner. if cold pizza is present, eat that. if pizza is not present, find a suitable place from which to buy ether another pizza, or other grocery items.

find nearest open network, and check email.

return to nearest available toilet. sometimes this is at the campsite, and sometimes it is several miles away.

return to campsite.

now comes the REAL fun:

if it is cold, turn on the heat.

if the campsite is empty, choose a podcast to listen to while preparing for bed. this minimizes the number of things you think you hear out in the darkness.

remove SD card from camera, and transfer photos to computer.

write today's caches (in chronological order) in black notebook.

shut down, close, and unplug computer.

plug cellphone charger into outlet previously used by computer.

if there is a pizza box present that still contains pizza, put it on top of the closed computer.

if an empty pizza box is present, place it and other paper waste in campsite fire ring and burn.

take out night items and arrange on top of either computer of pizza box (see above):

water bottles moved from daytime places

bible and other reading

ipod and earbuds

pretzels and granola bars from food bags.

open driver's side back door.

take stove and cook pot from kitchen bag and assemble stove, placing it on the ground in a suitably flat place left of car.

open tailgate on way to passenger side where both doors there are opened.

take out two water jugs (three if more water will be needed) and return to stove area.

unless the "WASH ONLY" jug is full (it nearly never is), fill the quart sized cookpot with water from one of the other jugs.

the lid to the wash jug goes on the rear door hadle so it can be found later.

light stove (lighter located driver's side rear door handle) and put water on to boil.

return to passenger side front and fill water bottles with potable water from jug(s).

replace potable jug(s) on passenger side rear floor.

brush teeth.

sort out meds. if the hour is close enough to bedtime, take all of them. if there remains a couple of hours before sleep, take only non-sedative meds, leaving sedatives in med cup, located in front passenger side door.

sort out sleeping clothes, being certain to choose a clean pair of socks suitable for tomorrow's shoes and weather.

take slip back clogs and put them on the ground near the driver's side rear door. move tomorrow's boots to outside position (alternate boots by day), leaving room for today's boots in inside position of driver's side rear floor, where shoes are kept.

empty pockets, putting items on dash.

take flashlight from front console and place in pants pocket.

check on the water to see if it's boiling or not. probably it isn't.

evening prayer. if appropriate to place and weather, light a candle.

keep watching to see when water boils. it's cold and dark out, and you don't want to waste gas. a watched pot does, in fact, boil.

when water boils, turn off stove.

put on heavy duty workgloves that serve as potholders. (kitchen bag)

carefully pour hot water into wash jug. since it already had some cold water in it, what results is water of a comfortable temperature with which to wash.

depending on the weather, these next steps may have to be executed very quickly or especially vigorously or they become excessively uncomfortable:

strip off all clothing above the waist. any clothing that is excessively dirty or that has been in contact with poison ivy is turned inside-out immediately.if there are people present nearby, a changing skirt may be used to protect their sensitive eyes.

working from top down:

pour heated water on head.

using a tiny bit of shampoo, wash hair (there's not very much hair to wash). if it is unbearably cold or rainy and/or i haven't broken a sweat during the day, this step may be omitted on alternate nights.

using only as much soap as sticks to my hand in one pass over the bar, wash face. on each step warm water is poured so that it flows over exposed body parts.

similarly wash arms, chest, pits, anything i can reach. pants and boots are left on so far in order to keep feet and soft shoes dry, as well as for warmth.

vigorously towel off.

put on first sleeping layer: lightweight short sleeve shirt. unless it's REALLY cold out, the hat does not go on yet in order to allow the hair to dry.

the flashlight is removed from the pants pocket and retuned to its place in the center console.

change from boots to soft shoes and remove pants and, if present, long johns. keep sock on; they will absorb nearly all of the stray water thereby keeping shoes dry.

wash squishy bits, then legs.

if it's saturday, shave legs. on saturday nights no portion of the washing-up may be skipped for any reason. to come to church sunday properly washed up is an offering.

one foot at a time (right first) remove dirty sock, wash and dry foot, put on clean sock.

put on all remaining bedclothes: one lightweight layer in warm weather, a light weight and a midweight layer in cool weather, and a lightweight, a midweight and a heavyweight layer including a hood in very cold weather.

all gear is removed from bedding and piled up in the cargo space, on the driver's side.

towel(s) are spread out over the gear bags.

the cooking pot is turned upside-down and put over the stove.

one last check is made to be certain that gear is appropriately stowed.

starting at the front passenger side, the doors are closed. the last door is never closed unless the driver's door is open, or unless the keys are IN MY HAND. voice of experience.

once inside car, lock doors.

push driver's seat all the way back and lean it as far flat as it will go. this makes it easier to get in and out of the back.

turn on car one last time to check temperature.

apply moisturizer to hands.

turn off all lights besides dome light.

unplug cell phone from charger, placing it in the outer folds of bedding. the phone is kept with me at night because it has on it the only clock i can see without my glasses.

remove power converter and other cords from console compartment and close compartment.

unplug ipod from car, plugging in earbuds.

conclude "downstairs" portion of the day, retiring "upstairs" to the "loft". the sleeping area is only nine inches higher than the driver's seat, but it still feels to me like going upstairs for the night.

if all meds have not been taken, take remaining ones.

settle comfortably into bedding.

if it's early enough, read. if not, choose an appropriate podcast to listen to while falling asleep.

have a few last words of prayer.

sleep.

process

i'm out on the road. while i'm out here i live in my car, hanging the loose "where" of my days on geocaches and stopping at regular intervals for prayer.

so out here i need campsites, food, fuel, and occasionally an open network.

there's a sequence to it.

to start, i have to establish a "home" from which i can cache. sometimes this is an actual campground, but i can stretch my trip a LOT longer if i find free legal campsites.

they're hard to find.

so if i have one, i can stay there and while i'm out caching i look for others, and when i find another, my area expands to what i can practically reach from that new base. it's kind of a game of leapfrog.

around the new campsites, i have to find public restrooms or outhouses that i can use, because these are not typically present at the campsites.

and you NEED those things.

i also need open networks that i can use to pick up my email, send messages, and do research. most libraries have open networks these days, but out in rural areas it can be tricky to find libraries.

and pizza! pizza is the ideal food for the roadtrip; $16 usually buys you enough pizza for three meals. it can be eaten cold, and it comes in a handy box. it's nutritious and you can get different meat and vegetables on every one you get, so you can kind of vary what vitamins you get.

sometimes you can find natural springs to fill up your jugs, too. sometimes the water is sweet and good, besides useful.

i also have to find gas stations and pharmacies and churches; i always say that wherever i am on sunday is where i go to church, but that's only partly true.

the whole truth is that as i travel from town to town during a week, i get a sense of where i should go to church. i consider it prayerfully, trying to get a feel for where i ought to be.

sometimes that's not a surprise. sometimes it's a church not so dissimilar from my home church, but sometimes it's a church very foreign to my experience.

typically at least once in a trip i will return to a church where i have gone already because i'm returning to friends, but i also like to stretch and make new friends.

i start to feel more at home on my earth, welcome and comfortable in wider and wider ranges.


and all of these places go on my map: springs, privies, campsites, churches, pizza places. it all goes in my giant database of amenities so i can find my way back later.

out where i am now there are a lot of roads that are on the map but they don't go through anymore. it's easy to get lost or have to go around the long way, so i got this brilliant idea: map those so i can avoid them later!

so my day is partly geocaching, partly searching for amenities, partly study and partly prayer.

if i can be of service to someone along the way, that's just gravy.




i gots ta go back to my campsite now.

tide comes in, blessings go out

today i made this new video from pictures i took in wells, ME:




and i updated this old one:

not really gone

i realize it's been a while since i posted here.

it's not that i have nothing to say, but sometimes instead of posting here i post to my photo albums or my podcast.

these days i'm trying to catch up on my geocaching logs, but i'm also writing a lot of new music, so although i am working at communicating something, i am not so much doing it here.

the two hearts

the small one and the large one
they're nested, these two:
the small frail heart of who you are
and the wide expansive heart of who you strive to be.
mine in yours
and yours in mine
God's great heart and our small heart
and inside that
God's great heart again.

carving the candle

last year for the first time i carved and painted the paschal candle for our church. my design was simple, based on a 15th century design.

this year for a lot of reasons it wasn't clear whether or not i would do the candle, but in the end i had to. you know how it is sometimes.

i wanted something simple, but a little more ornate than last year. i also decided to go with inlaid wax instead of paint,a thing i have never done and so only have an idea about how to proceed.

graph paper! you maybe don't know this, but there are some really nice onlice sites where you can print up free graph paper.



so.



sketch design. in the sketch i don't include a couple of the details, and although i can visualize most of the design, i still don't know about some of the colors.

once the design is sketched, you have to wrap it around the candle and cut it into the candle's surface. beeswax can be ornery; while it doesn't crack as easily as cheaper candles, it also doesn't necessarily lift out of the cuts. it's sticky.







the reason i know about the cheaper candles is because before i started cutting into an expensive one-shot-only paschal candle blank, i needed to practice cutting design elements, working with the dyes, and inlaying wax. it's a complex process.

i also had to practice simple design elements like thin stripes, or outlines. wherever you lay two colors right next to each other, you run the risk or chunks falling out of your inlay when you cut near it, or else of the colors running together if you heat the area too much.











the crown was a risk for me; the pointier a thing is, the less likely it is that you will be able to cut it properly into the wax, the less likely it is that you will be able to fill it with color, the less likely it is that it won't chip and break when you work around it.

the yellow dye was also difficult for me to work. i had to keep thinning it with more and more beeswax to lighten it up. the other dyes needed to be strong for that deep color, but the yellow needed to be very dilute. a little yellow dye goes a long, long way.










so here's the process: after the basic design is lightly cut in, you take your knife and cut holes for real. you have to be sure you cut deep enough (a little over and eighth of an inch) and you have to be sure your edges are clean.





then you scoop the melted colored wax into the hole, making sure to fill right to the corners, and not leaving bubbles. the best wax consistency for this is that elusive point just when it starts to congeal; still clear and liquid-y, but thick enough to stay on the knife.

as you might imagine, this requires hundreds of meltings, and each time you melt and re-melt you have to add dye and wax to keep the color going.

it's best to seal the new inlay by going over it very lightly with a hot knife. if you seal it properly, it sets the colored wax into the tight corners and makes the surface easier to work later on without chipping.

the tricky bit is that if you press too hard with the hot knife or linger too long over a spot, you will ruin your clean cut and the colors will run. your lines will blur and there will be a hole.


once you've got all the wax laid in and sealed, the whole thing looks a mess. it's kind of a leap of faith, not seeing your pattern while you're working. but then, slowly and carefully, you use your knife to scrape away the excess surface wax and little by little your design emerges underneath.

now's the nervous time. now you get to see if you really did fill in the holes properly. now you have to be extra careful not to catch any edges and break an inlay.

scrape, polish, pray.

mood swings

righty-o.

so aside from being wildly unstable, i have noticed a few patterns. the tricky bit is that the patterns don't normally remain stable.

barring moods that are connected to actual life events, most people without a mood disorder have fluctuations that look kind of like this.



the amplitude of the wave isn't very great, nor is the frequency. just in case you're not familiar with the anatomy of a wave, the amplitude of it is the height of the wave and the frequency describes how often the waves occur. the peak is the highest point on the wave, the trough is the lowest point, and the node is the place (twice in a full cycle for this kind of wave) where it crosses center.

the problem for people with manic-depression is that the waves have too great an amplitude, and often too great a frequency. when you have full cycles more than three times a year, they call it rapid cycling. a year might be represented this way:



the problem for me is that i have a very extreme form of the illness, and my year looks more like this:



let me break it down for you.

a while ago i noticed that i was hitting a trough on average every 27 hours. that's hard to cope with, because although you can predict when it's going to happen, it's kind of like a rolling blackout and it makes it just that much more difficult to keep any kind of regular schedule to my day. a three day period looks kind of like this:



but then i was noticing that i was peaking 4 to 6 hours before the troughs, which would yield a wave-shape like this:



and that just doesn't make sense.

so i took into account that i might be cycling even during my hours of sleep, which over a three-day period looks like this:



when i matched this wave frequency with what i was experiencing, it fit a lot better. i'm still uncomfortable, but it helps to know why and to be able to predict the swings.

so i'm making a full cycle on average once every 13.5 hours. i sleep for nine hours, which is partly a function of my body clock, and partly a function of my medication. when i am at either extreme of amplitude, it is difficult to fall asleep and when i am at a trough it's very difficult to get out of bed. further complicate the whole thing with hormonal cycles and it's just one big clustertangle.

peggy dow

peggy dow's is my favorite trail at bolton valley.

if you need the refresher or have just joined us, it's off the top of the number one chair, up in the north corner. i have this thing for the elbow of peggy dow's; you come off the lift on this treed-in and level trail and then you go around the corner and it drops out from under you and it seems like all of creation or maybe just the pretty parts are laid out in front of you.