Lucky

"We're  so lucky"
"Life is so good!"
"Ooh, this is my favourite!"

These are just a few of the phrases that come out of my mouth on almost a daily basis. I think the vitamin D3 (in olive oil, 6,000 IU per day recommended for us up here in the northcountry) and C (1,000 mg/d) are helping. Or maybe it's the exercise (my turkey trot time: 4 miles in 36 min!). Or the positive relationships I have in my life (we had a crowd over for fakesgiving yesterday and I really enjoyed everyone).

Back in late July/early August I gave myself a running injury (I ran on a sore hip and royally effed it up). This left me limping around in excruciating pain for an absurd amount of time. In the past couple of weeks I have finally been able to run more than a mile or so without soreness, and it is fabulous. And you know what I credit with my recovery? Not any amount of stretching or rest, or the three bodywork practitioners I saw. I credit time combined with the $5 cardio kickboxing classes down the road from my school. Crosstraining is where it's at, apparently. Our bodies are awesome, you guys. Too bad they don't come with a user's manual, though it could be argued that would take the fun out of it.

In other news:
Not much to report, besides that I am happy, busy, learning lots, getting good grades, riding my bike instead of driving my car when possible, consorting with a sweet vegan, which means cooking up all kinds of vegan delights (for thanksgiving: pecan and sweet potato pies, spanakopita, etc). Also, I just took a class on adoptive breastfeeding (inducing lactation in order to breastfeed a baby you did not bear). Fascinating stuff, and formally endorsed by the American Medical Association. As it turns out, breast is best for adopted babies too!

And here is a picture of my class :)

What happens when I stay over at the Little House

 

dressup month? does that exist? This is what I'm wearing to school today.

Hi world!

This post was originally going to be the picture, above, as a stand-alone piece. And then I realised that I haven't posted since June, and thought I should probably give a little more.

 I've been back in Maine from Mayne Island since late August. I'm thrilled to be here, and am luxuriating in the pleasure of having everything I need within walking/biking distance. I'm living a hop-skip from the beach in the east end of Portland, ME. I swam there just this morning! (and saw a jellyfish).

Been ever-too-busy living to sit down and tell y'all about it, but Lauren's been taking some lovely pictures, and that motivates me to share them with you, and thus you get to hear a little about life :)

Among a bajillion other things, I've been doing a ton of contra dancing, canning, growing sprouts, shoots and greens in containers and generally settling into my new apartment (sharing a room with classmate Teresa). Took trips to Mount Desert Island (for mountain clambering and lobster), Montreal (for hangouts and bagels), Vermont (for all night dancing and farm camp visits) and Boston (for activist brass band festival) these past few weeks before I'm back on-call till the new year. Also went to the Common Ground Fair and learned about lots of things, from DIY funerals/caring for the dead to hide-tanning and seed saving. I have inadvertently cultivated a constant sensation of being on holiday, which is certainly enjoyable, but not particularly good for knuckling down and getting things done on paper or computer. Thus my neglect of you, dear readers. Apologies.

I'm also in the planning stages for my midwifery apprenticeship, starting this coming spring: the world is the mollusk of my choice, and I'm having a hard time deciding what I want, but it seems likely I will be on the west coast for at least some of it.....

A couple of photos from Fancy Canadian Thanksgiving are below, and here is a link to the rest of them (worth following, if only to read Lauren's blow-by-blow account of the day).

Baby midwives get fancy for brunch-dinner.

Me, Andriana's dress, Claudia's jewelry and Anna's glasses and child (if you look very closely you might be able to see the a-stinkin-dorable gap between his brand-new front teeth.) He's my boy.

oh, no big deal, just living the dream...

Mayne: super dreamy.
Great music festival over the weekend, with dancing and lamburgers and a visit from sweet Sarah. Managed to queeze in some "work" picking strawberries, packaging chickens and the eternal task of weeding.
Today uncle Bill took us three interns sailing up to a little island about 10 miles away- the farm has water access so we put out right from here. Sunned, swam, saw bald eagles, seals, tiny hermit crabs and sea anemones. I found 9 plump oysters for dinner. Learned how to shuck them with a screwdriver. Ate 2 raw. Had the rest cooked in coconut oil, lemon juice and fresh pungent bay leaf. Yes, I'm bragging.

Cool thing: we grow "perpetual spinach" on the farm. It's actually a type of chard. I'm not a fan of chard but I'm LOVING the perpetual spinach. It has a spinachy flavor and tenderness when cooked, but holds its shape much better. Highly recommended.

Will add pictures when I get them off the camera.

There are more pressing matters to attend to, however: a bath in a beautiful mosaic-coverd tub overlooking the cow pasture.

Eat your hearts out.


Pictures:

It rained a lot at the music festival, but we still had fun! yay raincoats :)

"Work". In this case, thinning the beets. That hat has been a godsend. I have NEVER been the sunhat wearing type, but this one is on my head all day long every day. Thanks mum.

Come sail away.

Sailing shenanigans + naptime.

More fun than napping, even!

Fresh raw oysters straight from the shell. Yup.

My dinner: cooked oyster, quinoa pilaf.

The perpetual spinach

Bath time

Made my farmer lady some earings with feathers I filched from the chicken coop. It was her birthday.

Maine to Mayne

Hi, you guys.

I'm on the other coast, now. I can be reached at 250-539-9859, snail mail welcome, and more likely than usual to get a response (i bought stamps and everything!). 380 Campbell Bay Rd, Mayne Island, BC, V0N 2J1. Canada (obvi).

The last couple of weeks have been full to bursting.
Between filing taxes and packing (tiresome but necessary) I squeezed in some baby sister time (I think it's fair to say we were meant for each other). She's 13 or so months old now, and likes kale and rice and smelling flowers and stomping her feet.

Went to my big sister Emily's wedding. She suprised me by having me get up and give a speech on behalf of our family. Ting, if you're reading this, that was supposed to be you. Everyone else, if you ever want me to make a speech, I'd be much happier with at least 24 hours notice. That sounds like I'm bitter...I'm not, just a bit embarrassed. The wedding was super swell. Everyone looked beautiful, the vows were meaningful and moving, the DJ made us all work on the dance floor and I'm delighted to have such a ballsy bunch of in-laws :)

For those of you in need of those pesky details, I'm doing an internship on a small organic farm on Mayne Island until mid-August, working at the affiliated store and pursuing midwifery connections to get some volunteering/childbirth ed classes in.
I live in a delightful cob house (truly hobbit-fairytale), with an outdoor shower and a swallow's nest just outside, in view of my bed.

My days go something like this:
Wake up spontaneously around seven, without the irritation of an alarm clock.
Eat some breakfast in my unbelievable mosaic-covered kitchen.
Go move the meat chickens to greener pastures. Feed them. Remove the bodies of any victims of predators or fate (fate a.k.a. genes bred for such rapid growth that sometimes the cardiovascular system can't keep up and just quits)
Prune/trellis tomato plants for a while.
Weed the vegetables or something. Kill slugs. Kill caterpillars. Kill grubs.
Break for lunch. I am paid in food which comes from the farm and the farm store. I cook it myself. Perfect.
Work some more. Maybe pick some wool clean for processing or feed the skittish sheep some grain to get through their heads that humans=friends.
Maybe play a quick game of croquet with my fellow farmhand and Shanti, my farmer lady.
Have a quick snack.
Go for a bike-ride or a run or something (I'm seriously entertaining the idea of doing a half-marathon in November- the loop  I've run a couple of times this week is a mountainous 5.6 miles. Totally doable, but a far cry from 13.1....)
Me time: gather herbs or dig up roots, tinker with bikes, sew, read, work on tanning the deer hides that fell into my lap last week (I watched a youtube video, otherwise have no clue what I'm doing. Going ok so far, though. Right now I have well-scraped rawhide).
 Dinner- today was beef stew (with a bone with marrow in it and everything) with red orach, which looks and tastes a lot like lamb's quarters- I'd never had it before. The cows on the farm are tasty too. One gave birth today. Girl-baby, which means there is no need to chase it down and castrate, for which we are all grateful.
Bedtime is often accompanied by some letter-writing and a fire in my woodstove- I'm regretting packing mostly summer clothes.

Orach (pronounced orack)

Mum, sister, brother....My favourite moment of the evening may have been head-banging with the best man and my bro.

There you have it.

Endings...and beginnings

Farewell to the Hilltop- it was so good to have everyone over one last time before we move out. Marshmallow roasts and frankfurter toasts and baby squeezes.

The next morning Lauren and I rolled out of bed, into the car and drove out to Berlin NH, to attend the Baptism of our favourite little boy. My first time at an orthodox church. He definitely yelled, and the Father had to stop with his liturgy and ask for the holy binkie, seen here falling from the startled babe's wailing mouth.

Lauren and me and the newly christened child. He took it all very well, considering he was stripped naked, rubbed with oil head to toe, dunked fully under water and paraded about for the better part of 2 hours.

This orthodox church is a really neat blend of New England architectural aesthetics and classic onion domes. Can't help but wonder if the domes were stuck on afterwards...

Lauren and I got up wicked-early one day last week for a 7:30 am photoshoot date at Claudia's- we are all saying goodbye to our respective houses. Lolo is the backbone of this blog, as it turns out. See the rest here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larlar1286/sets/72157629830884092/

tumble into spring

Sometimes when I haven't been posting it's because I've been so glum and bored I don't think I have anything constructive or inspiring to share. Sometime sit is because life is so full and varied and luscious that I don't want to stop and sit and type for a second longer than school requires. The latter reason applies to my most recent hiatus.

To sum up:

Spring on the mountain is glorious: hiking, swimming, running, sunning, new foliage, burbling brook, enough ticks to make this song an appropriate sound-track to my life: ticks

I will be done my first year of midwifery school in exactly 2 days.
In that time I have learned lots of booksmart facts, ways to talk to clients and handy skills, like venipuncture, IM injection, physical examination and catching techniques. I am also developing some honest respect for the thing we call "intuition", though I think of it as my mind's unconscious smartness logically synthesizing sensory input. If I think a baby is a boy, or 7 pounds 6 oz, or a mama is going to have a difficult labor etc, I don't think of it as psychic knowledge, I think it is something along the lines of what we call a "gestalt" approach in plant identification- taking in the whole being of a plant with all our senses and just 'knowing' what it is we are looking at. 
I was sole catcher at a birth a couple of weeks ago- first time ever. The euphoria I'm still carrying from that is indescribable. I felt her little face emerge feature by feature, in the reverberations through her mother's perineum (I'm still not sure how to spell that word). I originally considered calling my blog "in pursuit of natural highs", because I expend a lot of time and energy pursuing an endorphin rush. As it turns out, giving birth naturally is one of the most mind-blowing experiences a person can have, and we birth workers get to go along for the ride.
Another triumph: For the first time ever I was paid money to attend a birth.
Shit got real. In a good way.

This summer I'm going to be out west on an island in BC- more to follow on that, I'm sure.

Molls

Went for a hike the other day. Mollcat came. She is the worst hiker ever- has to stop and rest every five seconds, gets hot and grumpy, is slow but yeslls if you leave her too far behind. We love her anyway. Left to right. Me , Andriana, Alyssa. (photo likely taken by Alyssa's Pop- her parents came to visit over the weekend).