This is perhaps the first retrograde in my life I am welcoming. August 20-Sept 12 is a good time this year to reflect, be, let waves lap on me instead of fighting them.

With this inward time will come some reflection for this site, some usefulness, some purpose. You see OSSUMNISS was born out of a drunken night with too much whiskey? beer? wine? tequila? Hell I dunno. However you get a website when two drunk fools have a credit card number and enough time to babble. I suppose that is a benefit of drinking at a club, you aren’t website/blog building. The downside is the possibility of drunk driving to get home (where you can buy domain names anyway).

Anyone up for a meditation walk with some pranayama? It could be fun. I’ll post that soon.

When my husband and I first moved to Colorado two years ago we did not know anyone.  He had a consulting gig he carried over from Miami, I got a gig working with a consulting firm here right away.  I traveled a lot and was home for a week then away for a week.  Our circle of friends was non-existent as the summer started in 2008.  Eventually I made friends through work and during one of my weeks off a co-worker and I decided to cook up a crazy Indian feast.  It was a Boulder Farmers’ Market day so my husband left us in the kitchen while he rode down to the market.  When he returned he had all kinds of produce, a delicious pine nut macaroon for me and news… he got me a job.  I looked at him like I wanted to kill him, I already had a job and enjoyed my week off, but I heard him out.

If you know him he is a chatty guy.  Well the bakers where he bought the macaroon from used a sweetener I am not allergic to and he was overjoyed he could buy me a cookie.  After talking with them longer he learned they needed Saturday help for their bakery stand.  He said I would do it.  I have to admit, it was a pretty damn good cookie and I was in.  The pay was not much, but it isn’t like I had a lot of people to hang out with on my week off.

So it was, I would man the stand on the Saturdays I was in town and my husband would take the shift the weeks I was gone.  And oh my goodness, did we have a blast!! The both of us began friendly relationships with regular customers, other vendors, and quickly found ourselves as part of the community we just moved to.  Towards the end of the summer the two of us would run the stand if the bakers were busy, in the winter we set up shop for them at the Fort Collins Winter Market, and we have become really good friends with the business owners.

Sadly the economy took its toll on the bakery and they are now defunct.  We are still solid with the bakers though and consider them family.  Their opportunity allowed us to engage in the local food community in such a swift way that I know who to call if I want someone to raise poultry for me, if I want someone to pull a raspberry bush off their property so I can grow one too, and I have a phone number to pick up stone ground wheat even if I want it in the dead of winter.  I have met many good people thanks to our experience at the market.

Therefore if you are new to town, or just looking to have a great time meeting your community and the local food scene try to work a stand at a market.  We have so many here in the Front Range.  I know there are ads on craigslist pretty often during market season asking for help.  And it never hurts to say hello to your food producers and see if they could use an extra set of hands.

We were dumped on.  Pretty bad.

However this a.m. the snow eased up and now at 11 am MST the sky is blue, the snow is falling from every surface it stuck to, the tree limbs are lifting up from the ground if they did not fall completely.

I went out this a.m. to walk the property, check on damage, shake off the thin fruit trees, etc.  All is good except a car that may need some repairs from driving home in the craziness last night.

fruit tree down... fruit tree up post shaking

Here is some of the tranquility in the aftermath.  Click on images to see them in larger form.

gotta love a deer with swagger giving you roto-neck

cheeky deer started hopping in photos, screw them!

found all the robin... 100 ft+ in the air

look at me, "king of the mountain"

NO, I'M KING OF THE MOUNTAIN

clothesline

deer fence for cheeky rats on stilts

Buddha, where are you?

inside a juniper

shoots are ready to grow

blooms are ready to show-off

hot millet ready to be eaten

NYE 2005 – I went to L. A. (we had just started dating), he stayed in Miami.  I missed him.

NYE 2006 – I was working at a field station in Costa Rica over Christmas so my guy came out to meet me for New Year’s. We rang in the year dancing on the sand in Puerto Viejo surrounded by fire dancers with fireworks being set off over our heads. Seriously, we ended up with firework debris in our hair when we kissed.

NYE 2007 – Quietly spent at our home in Miami drinking champagne and listening to sirens, gun shots, and fireworks in the neighborhood.  FYI, we didn’t live in a poor part of town either, Miami can just be SHADY.

NYE 2008 – The evening was spent in the screen hut at the edge of a forest on a farm and hostel property in southern, coastal Georgia. It rained hard and my fiance at the time streaked the property obtaining a small bottle of champagne to toast the night. The next day we enjoyed a darling New Year’s brunch at the Jekyll Island hotel.

NYE 2009 – We were drunk off our butts plastered on Jameson Irish Whiskey and Guinness.  Flogging Molly was playing a NYE show in Denver and we drank and danced the night away. After the show we went to Steuben’s for the one night of the year they serve Chicken and Waffles. It turned out the kitchen was not open for a while so we drank and danced some more before we had our food and made our way home.

NYE 2010 – Vast contrast to the year before. We had planned a low-key evening at mellow house parties but one friend’s daughter picked up a stomach flu, another friend had to cancel because her husband was sick. Instead we met a friend at Dushanbe Teahouse for an early toast, I had a tea/fruit juice sparkling infusion.  We went home and changed to return to the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art for their New Year’s Silver Ball.

Here is the countdown, the screaming, the bag pipe player doing Auld Lang Syne, crowd doing the universal Ole, Ole, Ole, then the bagpipe man jamming with the DJ. Please be patient, just before I focus on the bagpipe guy I remember my point and shoot only works well with horizontal orientation. My bad… and I was sober.

As the museum emptied we decided to walk up to the last night at bside lounge. You really couldn’t tell the place was closing down when we showed up, we couldn’t get near the door.

Instead we walked further west to The Bitter Bar were James was tending the night and very welcoming.  For being a swank Boulder location he brings a good deal of personality to the establishment.  He made me a pot of Evening in Missoula tea.

And an old-fashioned with a bootleg 17 year-old rye for the hubby.

It was a fun evening in Boulder.  We meant to be low-key but did dress up and get social.  Best wishes for your 2010! It is a year we are greeting with much love.

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower

nikki giovanni

happy winter holidays everyone. namaste.

New person. She came into your life and turned it upside down. He went out of his way to provide incredible customer service. Who is your unsung hero of 2009?

I started thinking about this and soon had a swelling list.  One of my yoga teacher training cohort has become my best friend locally, she even stepped up to do DONA certified doula training to help when we have our first child next year.  Then I started thinking about my prenatal yoga mentor that I certified with who gifted me a boppy the first day I started attending her class as a pregnant lady recently.  Then I thought of the spark of unadulterated sunshine I met from online who fills me with so much positivity whenever I get to be around her.  Then I thought of the PR person for a womens’ race that gave me and some friends a fat discount simply to encourage more women to get healthy and get out to do a 5K.  There was the awesome guy from up north who I met at a social from a conference and now I look up to for advice on natural family rearing.

I can go on and on.  One of the big commonalities is that I keep coming back to the connections I have made with the Front Range community.  I can’t pick one new person, I have to go with my community.  My husband and I have only lived in Colorado for 20 months, but the support and connections we have made are deep.  We thought made friends but the outpouring of support that has come our way since we announced our pregnancy has been down right overwhelming.  For two adults that do not have the most supportive blood families we do not take for granted the “tribe” we have found with our neighbors and friends.

Thank you Front Range… from Fort Collins to south of Denver we appreciate you.  You have shown us much kindness and we only hope we have been a friend to you as well.  Namaste.

Tonight the last candle was lit.  It always seemed like a token holiday to me, something to be there and over-hyped by Christians to counteract the over-hype of Christmas.  Passover is the high holiday.  However, I love living in a community with such a large Jewish community.  There were simple dinners and gatherings to celebrate the eight nights all over town.  I even had latkes with sour cream and applesauce in the last week with some nice families.

It was a lovely eight days and nights.  Thank you.  Shalom.

In undergrad I did a Caribbean legume and veggie rice dish.  It worked very well for the hippie school and hippie folks I hung around with.

It was in grad school when I lived in a less kind area that I stepped up my potluck game for less adventurous palates and I have found this choice has worked very well in almost every situation where adults are eating.

Pear-Walnut Salad

1 pear, thinly sliced

1/4 c. – 1/3 c. toasted chopped walnuts

fresh parmesan cheese grated or shaved

white balsamic vinegar

good quality olive oil

fresh black pepper

sea salt or kosher salt

organic spring mix

Toss spring mix with vinegar, olive oil, pepper and salt to taste. Add thin pear slices and parmesan on top.  Ask guests if there are any walnut allergies, if not then add them on top and lightly toss so most stay near the top.  One more drizzle of oil and spices.

I prep the ingredients and pack them separately to the event and assemble there.  I don’t know, I guess the presentation adds to the dish.  It is simple but will impress your friends.  They will be amazed actually.

This salad is easy, tasty, and easy on the palate so goes with a lot of dishes.  I have made this for casual gatherings, Thanksgiving dinner, Hannukah dinner, baby showers, etc.

Please post your go-to potluck contribution if you care to share.

We here at Ossumniss HQ have something amazing to share with you though.  A contest actually.  Your very own metal cock.  He weighs in at 1.5 pounds and is 20″ tall, exactly and approximately.  His meaning, whatever you want! Let him hang out on your mantle, be protector of your Wii high score, torment your parents, scare the squirrels in your garden. Your choice.

He is a beautiful little guy so we are not just giving him away.  You need to work for it.  Tell us your best quick story of personal enlightenment in the comment section.  We will harbor judgments which doesn’t seem very enlightened but that is how we will select the best story.

We will mail in the continental United States, but for local folks… we will bring him to Ignite Boulder on Thursday for you if you are going.  Just think, he can also be your drinking and heckling buddy.  Win-win.

Contest closes 9 December at 6 PM MST.  Winner will be announced 10 December.

Happy Bodhi Day.  Now go eat a tangerine.  Mindfully eat a tangerine.  And BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!