Purveyors of the Obvious

Starting the Year

// January 1st, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Uncategorized

Just reflecting on the start of the year with my guy for 5 years.

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.

winter by nikki giovanni

// December 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

winter poem

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.

Best “new person” 09

// December 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Today’s gwenbell.com prompt for her best of 09 series is

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.

Hanukkah

// December 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

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.

bodhi day co(ck)ntest

// December 8th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized

Happy Bodhi Day everyone! This is a good day for contemplation or rather an arbitrary day in the ebb and flow of winter holidays to be kind to one another.  The eighth day of the 12 month is about when Shakyamuni or Siddhartha Guatauma attained enlightenment.  Which calendar do you ask, well… for consistency sake let’s just say 8 December.  Anyway it is a great day to exhibit reverence, just like everyday.

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!

the mythos of the holiday hobo sack

// December 6th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

In early December ’06 I was in a car accident that left my back and right hand a little worse for wear.  I had planned on sewing a holiday stocking for my fiance but physically could not do it.  We had already gone to the fabric store, he picked what we wanted, and it sat folded up, unused.  On Christmas Eve I had the brilliant idea to take a chunky stick from the yard and put his presents on the fabric and tie in on the stick.  It was all I could do with my body post accident.  My fiance, now husband, is an odd duck and absolutely loved it.  He grabbed his hobo sack and took a march with it that night.  At the time we lived in Miami and had a huge garden and yard so would sleep outside under a crab apple tree on Christmas Eve, he had a lot of room to march hobo style.

Thus the mythos of the hobo sack was born.  We began joking that night that our kids would have hobo sacks for the holidays.  We would use it as a teaching tool with them.  We would allow them to pick their stick.  The ideal hobo sack stick.  If you pick a big, sturdy stick it would support a good amount of weight in the sack, but could get too heavy if their march was going to be a long one.  They would lose gifts out of the sack along the journey if it was too heavy until it was ideal weight for a good march.  If they did too small of a stick their hobo sack would have to be tiny and they would not get as many presents.  The feat of selecting the hobo sack stick would be a question of greed vs. comfort vs. sensibility.  We would let our kids pick their stick, put an appropriate collection of presents on the fabric and tie it to the stick, then go for our Christmas Eve or Christmas Day march into nature to open the presents.  The fabricated complexities of the tradition grew with the amount of champagne and orange juice we drank.

In ’07 I made a small stocking for my fiance to hang under the crab apple tree and he acted like he appreciated it.  In ’08 he had become my husband and prior to Christmas admitted he wanted the hobo sack back.  On Christmas day there was a big box for him, with a hobo sack on top of it attached to a stick leaning on the side.

The stick is already selected for this year… but as impeding parents we are facing more of a quandry with if we are going to celebrate a sham of Christmas for a non-Christian and a non-practicing Christian and what to do for our kids in the future.  If we do any Christmas stuff there will be hobo sacks involved and we will have kids growing up thinking this is typical holiday tradition.

STFU December

// November 28th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Uncategorized

In the United States we celebrated Thanksgiving this week.  The day means different things to different people.  For some it is a day that marks the genocide of the indigenous people of our country.  For others it is a day to hang our heads for all the turkeys that will be sacrificed to the altar of gluttony.  Personally I love the holiday to celebrate the bounty of food we have, how easy our lives are that we get to partake in a feast, and by surrounding ourselves with those we care for when we share the feast.  In short it is a day to be grateful for what we have and give thanks.

Even in this definition there are issues.  It seems mostly with family.  I love the phrase “If you think you have attained enlightenment spend a week with your family.”  It is so true.  I don’t spend the holidays with my family.  I have made an effort to avoid them on major holidays since I was a young teenager.  Now that I am married and my husband knows how trifling and unsupportive my family can be he helps me make sure we keep them at bay.  The only exception so far is my dad, this was his 3rd Thanksgiving with us.  My husband also seems to avoid his family on the holidays (though not for the same reasons).  Our results are usually great days with our friends, our tribe.

Leading up to Thanksgiving my twitter stream was packed with people either complaining or giving thanks for the holiday for personal or political reasons.  On Thanksgiving there were mostly tones of gratitude.  Then come Black Friday it seemed to revert to a lot of political and personal complaining.  This instant reversion made me a bit sad.

You see I love the holiday season.  I am a sucker and believe in goodwill to all men.  I do not celebrate Christmas but I love how many Christians act warm leading up to Christmas.  There are a lot of cool holidays in December that bring a sense of joy to their celebrants.  I like to be idealistic and spread that sense of joy from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.  These holidays are merely arbitrary dates to act joyful, however they are significant to people on the specified days.

So while this comes off as backhanded whining about other peoples’ whining I challenge myself and you to STFU this month.  If Thanksgiving is stressful for you, then the holidays in December can also be stressful.  They are only that way because we make them so.  If it is family then work on your issues if you can.  In some cases like mine you cannot so make the choice to add value to your family celebrations or find alternative plans if that will make you happier.  If you are sad you cannot be around your family then surround yourself with a good tribe, you can count on your community if you are a good friend to them.  If it is the cost of presents, then only spend in your budget or make gifts.  Do not put yourself in situations to stress yourself out if you can avoid it.  Try to keep the momentum you had on turkey day whether you ate poultry or nut loaf… be grateful and express it.

Keep the gratitude going this Thanksgiving weekend.  Try to keep it going in December and beyond.  If that is too hard then just STFU for December if you cannot add value to whatever you are doing with positive thoughts and actions.