sustainability, an antonym for capitalism.

Already, the oil spill isn't on the front page. Can we really forget about this, so quickly?
I know that it'll be hard to transition off of oil. I can't afford a smart car and I'm currently commuting back and forth over a 162 mile stretch. But you can bet your bottom dollar that once I get somewhere that I can physically commute, I will. Or I'll get a horse. Then I'd get transportation AND fertilizer. BP has a lot of fertilizer too, but it's all metaphorical bullshit. Not useful for anything, not really.
I'm just so tired of all of this capitalistic machine. It works really well, for rich people. Too bad there aren't very many rich people.
I remember, I had this one friend. He was gorgeous and played the piano. He was sweet on me, a little bit, I think. But he had no idea what life was really like for real people. His parents get lots of time off, he never had to say "oh, I can't afford that", and he hasn't ever really had a job.
My family is a little bit more normal. Both my parents work, and they work hard to barely keep their finances afloat. My dad goes to hard, physical labor (with his diesel engineering degree) every day with two herniated disks in his back. My mom works a desk job, through a migraine she's had for nine months and a boss that continually adds to her workload (with no reward) because she's a good worker and gets it done. In twentyfour years, they've never had a vacation together that lasted for more than three days. I started working when I was twelve, doing under the table farm work to bring in a little extra money.
And we're the people who keep the country running. The mechanics and the truck drivers who deliver the fancy products to whomever it is that can afford it. We're the accountants that play by the rules and pay the right taxes. We're the people who get our pensions cut and take 15% pay cuts while these inglorious CEO's get their million dollar bonuses. We're the people that train the Vice- president's kid to do the job that he only got because of daddy's money, and then the people that have to put up with an incompetent boss. We're the people who bear all of the cost of the capitalistic function of society, and who reap none of the benefits. We don't own our houses, we're losing our jobs, we can't retire, we can't buy good food, we can't even regulate our government because we don't have the money to run against someone doing a terrible job that can take time off to campaign and to buy marketing analysts.
(At least we finally have health care, sort of...)
And we're losing hope. We're losing faith.
We're tired of corporations buying off the government. We're tired of shipping your products. We're tired of the continual inventory, of being nothing but numbers in your system, of having to look you in the eye while we serve you food that we can't eat. We're tired of your yacht races, of your ferraris and your private clubs.
And now, we're getting restless.
What you're doing to the world, to the people, to our minds- it's not sustainable.
We're going to have to change a few things.

tea parties!

I'm feeling rather productive today, with my orange and lavender apron and my half packed house attesting to success. I've got really delicious yellow cupcakes in the oven, that I intend to drape handmade caramel as icing onto.

I'm planning a tea party as a farewell to us, slightly before we'll be totally packed so that I can still wear a party dress and hopefully play croquet. It'll be nice to see my favorite park and my favorite people before we leave, and the weather looks as if it might be halfway tolerable.

It's been a nice few years up here

Someday, I'll be as brave as my face.

I have a touchy stomach, usually when I'm dealing with some form of rejection, or worried about the people I share lives with.
I get achey when I'm tired, and when I'm sad.
My neck hurts when I'm having trouble rationalizing my way out of an emotional response.
Life is messy, and it hurts. There's no manual, nobody ever has the same experience, and we're all so alone that it comes back together somehow.
Right now my body is telling me that I'm worried, sad, and irrational.
The more I listen to it, and straighten this new mess out now, the less I'll have problems in my emotional and physical life.
It's just so hard, sometimes. Sometimes letting yourself throw up for weeks is easier than figuring out why you feel that way. After all, we can treat nausea fairly easily. Give me some ginger, any day. Sorting out the cause is much harder. Changing your life to make the solution permanent is even harder.
How'm I supposed to solve self esteem issues, when I require constant praise and encouragement to have any at all? How'm I supposed to look abandonment issues in the eye, when everyone is so good at leaving me? How is it that I'll fix my viewpoint, while avoiding the pitfalls of blaming someone else or running away?

I have such a brave face.
I'm always telling people "everyone else is just as scared as you are".
I'm always advocating change and love.
I'm so damn sure of myself and my plans.

But really, where it counts, I just feel so lost and alone and broken and unsure of everything. and I hate it. wish everything could play along to my little imaginary rules that only I follow. wish that I could scream my way out of this corner, wish a million times that I was brave enough to follow my own advice.

That's not the point. Life is messy. It's supposed to hurt like this, sometimes.
The point is, tomorrow we get up again and we try harder.

List.

10 things that I've learned in the past couple weeks:

1. Ketchup becomes pressurized and explodes if you leave it on the oven while you cook meatloaf for a couple hours
2. The internet is more full of sketchy people than I ever imagined. Seriously, is this where we're at as a culture, globally?
3. Dreams are awesome. I should write them down more often. They can also be used to flush out symptoms from body awareness. 
4. Doctor Who is quite possibly the best TV show ever. I'm still torn between my loyalty to Scrubs. Both have an awful lot of life lessons in them, sneakylike.
5. I need to clean my house more often. We've come up with 5 sackfulls of garbage, and several more of things to be donated. This would be less of a chore if I went through everything every 3 months or so, instead of every couple years or so.
6. It's really draining to try to call everyone who needs calling. It's a lot more relaxing to just chill and wait for people to call me, and it seems like letting go of the responsibility to get people together gives me a lot more time to clean my house and cook meatloaf ; )
7. The Almanac says that it's supposed to feel like summer after the 8th. However, it also said that this last winter would be snowier than normal, and it didn't snow at all here. I question the validity of the Almanac, and wonder how they got to be the authoritative source on everything, anyways. 
8. I need to take better care of my body. I'm going to have it for a long time, and I haven't been managing it very well recently. I need to get over my dislike of the rain and just go do something active, or I need to stop eating cookies purely it's too rainy to do anything else.
9. I'm extremely dependent on my books being nearby. I can't believe how much stuff I thought I knew before I took all of my books down to my parent's garage and couldn't look anything up. 
10. The national conference for naturopathic medicine has a "creative black tie" dance at its conclusion. So. Stoked!