Friday Afternoon Update! 27: The “shifting gears” edition

Marking Time

The last month was pretty serious indeed, and I’m not unhappy to see it leave. I’m talking lunar months here, as the calendar we generally use seems useful to me only because it’s the one most of us are using. 

The calendar on my wall, the one I use when I want to see what’s really going on, is a composite, stringing our conventional days of the month along a spiral of the phases of the moon. By that calendar’s logic, yesterday was the last day of the Alder Moon, which dealt with fire and resurrection and healed self-doubt, and today is the first day of the Willow Moon, which honors the death aspect and heals fevers and headaches. Hmmm. Out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Well at any rate, the end of that last moon brought with it a flurry of little shifts which will reveal themselves over time, as well as a couple of makeovers which are more than anything outward markers of the inner shifts which will become obvious as the miles pile up.

Shifting Gears

Every six months or so I have to do something drastic with my hair, either growing it out or chopping it off, whichever seems appropriate at the time. Not a lot of challenge to the grey matter in figuring out which direction to go. And Wednesday, since I hadn’t cut the stuff in half a year, it was time to pull out the clippers and have a go at it.

Nothing like a fresh buzz to give me that carefree get-it-wet-and-go feeling, that change-of-direction feeling, that thank-god-the-Alder-Moon-is-drawing-to-a-close feeling. Did I mention the habit of la luna to draw forth that which it is intent on delivering you from? Yes. I’ll be happy to set aside the self-doubt project for another year!

Playing with Punctuation

Just because I feel the need to create a balance between my meat-life and my cyber-life, I’ve decided to give my little blog a tiny overhaul and shift in appearance as well…the sudden appearance of caps! Well, if the hair is shorter, why not make some of the letters taller! Works for me. And perhaps for your readability as well, something that James pointed out to me many moons ago!

Of course, this turn of events has me a bit worried. What next? Punctuality? Punctuationalism? Oh well, as long as I don’t have to Grow Up in the bargain it should all work out fine!

Eggs out of the box

Marathon day = Patriots day = perfect segue into school vacation week, a week of no school drop-offs and more time to play with the boy. And being as this conventional calendar month, that would be April, marks the end of our experiment with membership in the Massachusetts Audubon Society, we decided to brave the weather on Wednesday and visit Drumlin Farm out Lincoln way.

Well of course it is always a joy to go on an adventure with the boy, eating our whole wheat tortilla roll-ups with carrots and orange slices on a big granite bench, searching for the black foxes and lions tigers and bears, standing on the pig scale and seeing how many people it takes to measure up to a boar. For the record, the boy is a piglet, and he and I together are a growing pig.

Ironic, though, to go to a nature center and find chickens in boxes, albeit very nice boxes, with tall ceilings and relatively clean wood chips and a little door to a wire-enclosed running yard. As I wrote on Tuesday, chickens are birds, and they are meant to live on grass and bugs, and whatever odd bits of grain they can find during grain season…which is like six months away!

So a nice big box to sleep in at night when the nasty chicken eating mammals are out looking for dinner…that works for me. And during the daylight hours when the sun is shining and the heart of a young chicken years for weeds and bugs? Set my chickens free! I guess I’ll have to do a bit of deeper searching to find a proper farm to visit. 

Completely Irrelevant Aside #1

Am I the only one who hates those automatic perfume spray thingies that are popping up in all the public bathrooms these days? I’ve got a totally Pavlovian shudder that goes up my neck and down my back whenever I hear that little >squirt< sound that they make. Yuck!

Completely Irrelevant Aside #2

Am I the only one who gets a little >head cock–sniff sniff sniff< reaction when someone walks into the room smelling like one of those auto-spray bathroom thingies? Like, on purpose! Like they actually went to the cologne counter and bought the stuff? Show some subtlety people, please!

finale time

well then…that was the week that was. comments are welcome, of course, especially if they relate to finding a good local old-school farm near boston. and until next time…

photo by makelessnoise