Permaculture Voices 2 Day One

Settled in after a 5 am flight and near doom (standby ticket in Chicago- why my ticket was so cheap) midway, we headed to the first night keynotes for the conference. The conference being Permaculture Voices, connected to a podcast of the same name that interviewed Chad last year about quitting his job.

Overload.....in San Diego

We arrive around lunch time, after a 5am flight. I barely escaped the drama of having a standby ticket from the Chicago to CA leg of the trip. No wonder it was so cheap!

We arrived, checked in, and headed straight for food and conference name tags. Soon we were swept away in the introductions, the welcome speech, a World Cafe exercise, and ...... I crashed. The keynote hadn't even happened yet. Chad nodded to me and I slipped out the doors and took off back to the main hotel. Too much. Too much.

Regrouping now. No wifi and my data plan which has another 20 days on it sent me a usage exceeds warning. We will get this figured out, but first I need tea and to wash my hair.

Hopefully I can rejoin the festivities later tonight.

Every Breaking Wave

I don't fall in love easily. I just don't. I didn't return the verbal sentiment to Chad when he first blurted it out and even then I had to start by saying it in French. Words are important to me and they make things real.

When I say that I feel like I am falling in love again, with poetry? I am not surprised that it took me a year, and a bit, to get to this point. I recognise and am cautious of lust and passion, because those things feel out of control to me. Fleeting. My feet need to be on the ground, a steady footing. Not necessarily a well worn path, I have no problem with climbing through brambles and thorns and exploring the darker parts of the wild, but do not unground me or put me out to sea.

That is why the ocean scares me so much. The rushing, powerful waves, the music, the rage and power that ebbs and recedes. This is pure and utter terror to me. Fist clenching, dizzy, panic inducing terror.

This is what falling in love with poetry feels like. Again. Feels like standing on that sandy beach with high tide rolling in, storms on the horizon.

I hope now that I have a few more decades on me that I can handle it this time around and not turn and run from it. I think I may have a handle on how to write the monsters this time around, bring them to life in ways that can't hurt me. If I am wrong? I'm much better with a sword now than at seventeen. The rules have changed.

Home. Finally.

After three days in Texas, I finally got a flight home. Still arguing with American Airlines about compensation. They offered me $75 for the inconvenience of sitting on a parked plane for 6 hours and then getting off again with no word for two days on when I could get home. Yeah. $75 isn't going to cut it. Not even a little bit. We will see.

When I got to the Iowa airport, I swooned. Not in the good way, in the oh dear God I am blacking out way. I managed to sit on the floor before I fell, and brought myself out of it. Yay honey cough drops that Candice put in my pocket before I left. I greyed out one more time while talking to the baggage lady, but the honey was already working and it didn't last too long. Got the baggage and twenty minutes later managed to haul all that mess out to the parking lot and find my car.

I drove home slowly, mindful of more dizziness signs. I didn't get this far just to end the story bloody in a ditch.

Once home, I hugged children, passed out gifts, and then actually passed out. I slept for a few hours, then sipped some tea. My heart was racing and my bones rattling- so I knew I had an electrolyte depletion. gatorade was brought out and soon I was sleeping again. That was about all I could manage.

Today, the kids were super clingy. Isaac learned new words, how to use the computer mouse to play PC games that are not touch screen, worked on potty learning, and seems to have grown up a lot. I missed those slow moments that growth unfolds because I was gone. Trust me, this hurt.

Holly and Lily were eager to just be in the room with me. Everyone was loud and high energy and eventually all the moving and noise was too much. I left the house for a few hours, got some coffee and took care of paperwork.

When I returned I made fancy ramen for dinner, folded laundry, and packed.  I'll probably repack tomorrow, just to make sure I have everything I want to take, equipment wise. Tomorrow Jessica comes to help clean, and I have so much work to do before class.

What I am getting at? I will, I promise, get more posts up from the island and from exploring Atlanta with Jen. Right now? I am barely above water.