So, I think I may have mentioned at the beginning of this month’s Self-Portrait Challenge that I have not so much to do with the glam. For this final week, I had grand plans of getting my mohawk all slickered up, and pulling out some of my old Wiccan Priestess get-ups; I even found an old wand I had made in a box while we were moving (I mean that’s where the wand was, not that that’s where I made it). But instead, I spent the last two days working on my truck, in an attempt to get it to stop making the sound like the axle was being gnawed in two by a giant steel-toothed rodent. This is my life folks. It doesn’t really feel like a self-portrait if it’s a picture of me pretending to be someone that I’m not. I have many facets, and some of the time I dress up, I suppose, and there was a time in my life when I wore make-up and partied at the club, but it was long enough ago that I was using a fake id to get in the door. Here’s a self-portrait that shows one of the personalities I’m a lot more likely to be sporting these days.

I’m sure y’all are mostly familiar with this sentiment, but I really do think I can claim that this is a particularly bad one. Is Mercury retrograde or something? I need to look it up. To just set the scene, let me remind ya’ll that I love the place where we were living. I had done all of Kamana 2 there, meaning that I knew the place really well. 17 wooded acres, with deer, coyotes, bobcats, a billion birds, a view of Mt. St. Helens, and a woodstove. What more could you ask for? Well, we-who-are-never-satisfied-with-what-we-have decided that we need to actually own a place like that, rather than just renting it, so we’re implementing a plan by which we can actually save some money and buy our own house.

We’ve been moving for 3 weeks now. Most everything is in the new place, so we’re at that hardest part of the move where we’ve already moved everything we actually want and care about. The rest of the stuff is just accumulated crap that we are obligated to get out of the old place. The weekend started a little rough. Eric came up to see the place and give us a hand on Friday. Saturday morning, we got up early to drive in to Olympia for kung fu. The roads were clear, except for the one icey spot on the off ramp in Olympia. I was completely not expecting it, and slid the Ford into the concrete guard rail on the passenger side. We hit hard enough that we bounced back across the icey patch and hit the opposite guard rail also. I was shocked to find that there was no visible damage to the truck at all. Not even a scratch. The rare occasion where I am thinkful for the big heavy American vehicle that I drive. Wait, that’s not accurate. I am really thankful for that truck quite often. It’s hard not to be thankful for a working vehicle that someone just gives to you. But I do wish it was just the wee-est bit lighter and more, well, like my old 4-Runner. Anyway, we continued on to kung fu, and all seemed well.

However, it is possible that the little jostle exascerbated a problem that already existed. The right front brake had been chattering loudly from time to time, and had once or twice made a fairly horrible grinding sound for less than a second. I must insist that everyone remember that this noise was happening BEFORE I ran the truck into the guard rail. That means that it is NOT MY FAULT.

For the sake of the consensus space-time reality, let’s leave the issue of the truck for a minute, and follow the order of the weekend. By Saturday night, the storm was blowing in and it felt like snow. Around 3am, Preston woke up and wandered in the living room, where I heard him say, “Baby, it’s snowing.” He knew that I would be excited about it. The one bright spot in my weekend was waking up a few hours later, when the sun came up, and taking some time to do a little tracking around the house. It seemed like most every animal had got things wrapped up by the time it started snowing. There were some Pacific Jumping Mouse tracks by the compost, some skunk tracks from when it first started snowing, and various rabbit trails. Nothing extraordinary, but a good start to an otherwise horrible day.

It quickly became clear that the noise in my truck was happening more often and getting more horrible. Something is catching in the brake caliper and dragging, making a horrible metal shearing sound. The truck was in Onalaska and the garage is in Olympia. Neither of us wanted to tackle taking apart the brake in the soupy-mud driveway in Onalaska, so I decided to just risk driving it back up to Olympia, and I took a load of stuff with me while I was at it. Fortunately, no major mishap occurred on the way, although the truck continued to sound as though the front wheel was going to shear off the axle from time to time.

There was one more bright spot in the weekend, and that was the fact that I made it to Olympia in time to meet the cable guy, and I am writing this on the computer hooked up to “blazing fast internet”. For real, y’all, I don’t know how I have dealt with dial-up for so long. And also. Cable! I have never had cable. Did you know that there is a whole channel called BookTV!? A whole channel devoted to books! My god, how can the universe be so fabulous?! And Eric and I watched a show about tracking brown bears in Alaska. Video of trackers and brown bears! Right in my living room! Preston and I have talked about my addictive personality, and we will be monitoring the cable usage closely.

I called work, told them that I don’t have a car for the day and that I won’t be in the office or be able to teach the class in Aberdeen on Monday. Preston brought a load down in the pickup truck, we had some food at a nice local restaurant (because, y’all we now live in a place where, if you are hungry and you don’t feel like making something because all of your pots are still at the other house and you don’t think raw potatoes and granola bars sounds like the sort of dinner you’re craving, you can just go downtown and have food at any number of fabulous establishments where they know what things like pesto sauce and feta cheese are. This is different than living in Onalaska), and headed back to Onalaska to pick up Preston’s tools and another load of stuff. Back at the new apartment 3 hours later, we discovered…a Mythbusters marathon on cable! Mythbusters back to back until 2am!

Also, our new apartment has a bathtub! So fabulous! We had baths, and leftovers, and watched Mythbusters with Sunrise Magoo (who did not like the car ride, but is adjusting just fine to apartment living it seems). This morning, we woke up to more snow, below freezing temps, and the news that the freeway is closed between here and Onalaska (and also between here and Preston’s work, which is convenient because he was planning to call in today anyway). However, we need a few tools for the truck project (which I have decided that I want to be in charge of, with Preston as tech advisor; I’m tired of relying on someone else for all of my vehicle maintenance, and I feel like I should learn how to do it myself), and the roads are super-slick. Not sure that a trip down to the mall area to get some Sears tools is in the cards today, at least until it warms up and stops snowing.

(For those of you who live in places where it snows for real, and who think that I am being a big baby about a little skiff of snow on the ground, I need to point out a few things. 1) It never snows here, meaning that the city has no budget for snowplows or gravel trucks. 2)It never snows here, meaning that people here don’t know how to drive on slick roads. We had to drive down the road a little ways to get cell reception for Preston to call work (because have I mentioned that we don’t get cell reception in our house…we’re working on getting Skype set up, but in the meantime we aren’t exactly accessible), and there were people sliding all over the place. 3) It never snows here, so people just don’t have the equipment for it. I’ve talked to people who have never owned a windshield scraper in their lives, let alone a set of chains. People put rain tires on their cars, but not snow tires. All three of our vehicles have mostly bald rain tires on them. (Yes, that’s right we have three cars, and cable TV. You may consider us part of the problem if you like.))

So. Preston went back to sleep, and I’m updating my blog with the blazing fast internet while the snow comes down. Really, it’s not a bad way to spend a morning, but I wish someone was out there fixing my brakes, and also moving the rest of our stuff out of the old house.

I have spent the day inside a primitive shelter with two different wood fires going for 6 hours or so. I smell like smoke; I’m covered with dirt; I have ashes in my hair and smeared on my cheeks; I have roasted garlic and smashed remnants of sweet potatoes, carrots, and yucca root under my fingernails. I am exhausted. A co-teacher and I have spent the day teaching 30 fifth graders about flintknapping, rock-boiling, cordage, and primitive cooking methods. It was a blast, as always, and it was so much work, as always.

Anna and I started the day a couple hours before the kids got there, since we needed to have a fire going and the rocks heating for long enough to do the rockboiling before the kids had to leave. We started the fire using a bowdrill. Anna worked the set while I put together the tinder bundle and layed the fire for her. As she got close to getting a coal, she asked for my help. I knelt on the far side of the fireboard from her, and she had me support her handhold hand while she continued to drill. I love working a joint friction fire; seems like a really effective way to bring two people’s minds together. With two fires going in Malalo (the shelter on WAS land designed based on traditional Akamba shelters), we split wood, gathered rocks for knapping, and caught up with each other since we haven’t talked since the end of summer camps this year.

The kids were great, engaged, funny, excited. The parents were impressed, as they always are by our curriculum. We taught them how to make cordage with raffia, everyone sitting on the dirt floor of the shelter by the central fire, had them each make a stone knife to chop vegetables with, made roasting sticks for everyone, and roasted carrots, bell peppers, garlic, yucca root, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, and apples. For the grand finale, we boiled water in a coal-burned wood bowl, using glowing rocks from the fire. With the boiling water, we make cedar-hemlock tea, which the kids mostly don’t want to drink because it has ashes in it. After the kids left, we drink the tea ourselves, while we clean up the masses of mutilated vegetables from the stumps and dirt floor in Malalo, scatter the stone knives and roasting sticks, debrief our day with each other (and okay, maybe talk a little bit about our love lives also), and I hit the road to drive the three hours back home.

The sweat and fire smoke permeate the truck on the way, and my back sticks uncomfortably to wrinkles in my layered shirts against the back of the truck seat. My joints stiffen, sitting in the truck after squatting in the dirt all day. My eyes are dry and red, scratchy from all the smoke and dirt, and droopy from just being worn out. Stepping out of the truck at home feels great, and the thought of a warm shower is just about orgasmic. At the new apartment, the bathroom is bare. There is one towel on the rack, my toothbrush and toothpaste next to the sink. The shower curtain, decorated with little yellow ducks and the words “chics rule”, is held up with two nylon belts until I remember to move the shower curtain rings from the old place. But the water pressure is perfect, and the water is hot. There is Bath and Body soap here, wonderful smelling, although I’ve long forgotten what kind it was. There is no shampoo moved yet, so I use soap on my hair. After steaming in the shower for as long as the hot water lasts my face feels clean, my pores loving the steam. I feel like I have washed off so much dirt and ash that I’m visibly lighter than I was. If I had a bathroom scale here I would be tempted to check. I feel really good after spending a day teaching kids how to sit in the dirt and play with plants and rocks and sticks. I can’t think of a more rewarding way to spend a day. And I feel so refreshed after the shower that, standing there in the steam with my hair all higgledy-piggledy from the towel-drying, and steam everywhere, and feeling just so alive that I’m smiling goofily, I realize that this is about as glamorous as I ever feel. This is about as glamorous as I have any need to be.

If you’re not familiar with the Self-Portrait Challenge, you should check them out. Here’s the challenge for this month:

Lets ditch those imperfections and go all out GLAM. Yes lets glam it up with some disco, diamonds and glitter.

I suggest some gorgeous shots - really over do it on the posing and makeup and dressups and show us the extrovert you. The sexy mama in the kitchen with the peek-a-boo apron or how about some diamontes on those dungarees, stillettos, feathers and lycra. Looking for ideas then go no further than Glam Rock as your inspiration, KISS, David Bowie, and Queen and Garry Glitter. Glam means dressing androgynously in make up and glittery, florid costumes such as David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust phase or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Get Glam everyone!

We started out Monday morning, picking up Eric and Sushi on our way through Olympia, and headed up Hwy 101 towards La Push. There was heavy rain and wind, and it took several hours to get to Forks. It was well after dark as we took the turn-off to La Push. A few miles down the road, we saw flashing lights ahead in the darkness. As Preston drove slowly forward, we saw the looming figure of a WSDOT vehicle with a big plow on top of it. The signs flashed Road Closed warnings. At a low spot in the road, just four or five miles from La Push, the confluence of three rivers (the Bogachiel, Quilluette, and Sol Duc) had missed a turn in the river bed and was flowing across the road. From where we stood in the dark, it didn’t look that bad, just a few inches of water for 100 yards or so. There was one car ahead of us in line, and they lived just down the road. They could actually see the start of their driveway from the edge of the water. They were on their way home from a fishing trip, so the guy pulled on his waders and headed out to walk the path to his driveway and see if he thought he’d be able to drive home. You can see the height of the water line on his waders in the picture below.

They decided that their little Honda car probably wouldn’t make it through the window-high flood. We chatted with the DOT guy for a little while. Preston, joking around with the guy, said, “We’d make it; we have an SUV.” The DOT guy, a classic country boy, said slowly and with no hint of either sarcasm or any intention of letting us past the barricades, “Mmm-hmm. I’ve seen those advertised.” I almost fell over it made me laugh so hard. I love me some of that dry dry stone-face humor.

Preston was all for just turning around and driving back home. I really wanted to stay in Forks and see if the road was open in the morning. Sushi and Eric both wanted to stay, but also voted that since this was Preston’s birthday trip he should get to have final say. I suggested we stop and have dinner and talk about it after we had eaten. After much negotiation and some chinese food, Preston was still pretty adamant about wanting to head home. We all still wanted to stay, but we agreed to go along. As we drove past the hotel, Preston turned in to the driveway at the last second, asking if it was too late to change his mind. We had just gone through so much negotiation that the rest of us were taken off guard. Sushi said, “I would love to stay, but if this is the sort of thing where tomorrow you’re going to change your mind and be resentful that we stayed, or be tempted to say ‘I told you so’…that would be hard to deal with.” I voiced my agreement with Sushi, that this needed to be a genuine decision for Preston, not something that he was going to hold against us. And then Eric piped up with his (IMO) brilliant stance. “If you decide tomorrow that you are mad about staying tonight. Well, to be honest, I don’t really care. I have to deal with my own emotions and you have to deal with yours. If you want to stay tonight we should, and if you feel differently tomorrow, that doesn’t really have anything to do with me.” It’s nice to be around people who, by their actions, help me to remember that other people’s emotions are not my responsibility. So we stayed, and it was really nice. What else do you need to know about a motel except that they have cable, wireless internet, a bathtub, and enough beds for everyone?

At around 2am Eric and I were the only ones up still, and we were both feeling a little restless. He had checked out a camera from the college media loan program, so we decided to go on a nighttime tour of Forks.

Around the hotel, there were a few woodcarvings, and one of them was a carving of a big logger. At the base of the statue was a collection of white stones, left as if at an altar, and a dark mark, as if someone had been burning a candle on the cement base.

The next day dawned clear and sunny, and when we talked to the people at the La Push resort, they said the road was open, although the seas were still pretty wild with all the run-off and no one was surfing. We decided to drive down and have a look, and were blown away by what we saw. Of course, I knew theoretically that the ocean gets that high, since I’ve seen all those huge trees piled at the top of the beach, but I didn’t have a good visceral understanding of what it would look like. It was wild, in the wilderness sense of the word. It only took a few moments for Preston to decide that it would be worth staying, even if we had to leave the surfboards on top of the truck the whole time, and we settled down to re-acquainting ourselves with the place.

And how can you not just love these guys?

As the waves receded far down the beach, they discovered that if they timed it just right they could get out onto this huge stump that had been augured into the sand. Getting back down required some pretty fancy timing, and Eric got himself pretty well soaked when a bigger wave splashed up over the whole stump. Here’s Preston doing, I don’t know, some sort of Jesus impression, I think.

And have I mentioned that I have a total crush on Eric?

We stayed out most of the day, checking out the amazing driftwood sculptures, like this image that Preston took, of a mermaid with amazingly perky breasts watching the sunset with her demon lover.

Sushi also spent a lot of time writing in her journal and just generally soaking up the amazing magical nature of La Push.

We stayed to watch the last of the sunset, and headed in for dinner.

Tags: vacation, flood, driftwood, pictures, surfing

Here’s the new challenge for this month:

Lets ditch those imperfections and go all out GLAM. Yes lets glam it up with some disco, diamonds and glitter.

I suggest some gorgeous shots - really over do it on the posing and makeup and dressups and show us the extrovert you. The sexy mama in the kitchen with the peek-a-boo apron or how about some diamontes on those dungarees, stillettos, feathers and lycra. Looking for ideas then go no further than Glam Rock as your inspiration, KISS, David Bowie, and Queen and Garry Glitter. Glam means dressing androgynously in make up and glittery, florid costumes such as David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust phase or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Get Glam everyone!

Well, let me tell y’all, I got way more inperfections than I do Glam, so this month is going to be a lot more challenging to me than last month was. After I read this month’s challenge, I lamented to Preston, "I don’t even own any make-up, how am I going to come up with 4 glam self-portraits?"

"I think you’re going to have to dig those fuck-me shoes out of the back of the closet," he suggested, because of course, he remembers about the fuck-me shoes, which I haven’t thought about in years. So here y’all go, a self-portrait from another era, taken today, after I exhumed the shoes from under the surfing gear, bicycle panniers, old backpack, a couple sleeping bags, and Preston’s fancy dress shoes.

p.s. I’m posting this early, because I’ll be in La Push for Preston’s b-day for the next few days. Walking on the beach in the rain!

Tags: self-portrait challenge, red shoes, heels, feet, pictures