restless heart.

The year is ending in a few short days and I feel on the precipice of the unknown.  I have no clue what the new year will hold.  I don't have any big plans, but I'm in the mood for change.  What kind of change, I'm not sure, but I'm restless.  I have some goals for 2014, some big, most relatively small.  Aimless restlessness is an obnoxious sort.  I would prefer restlessness with a clear aim in sight, rather than a general feeling with not much direction.  I think this time of year precipitates this kind of aimless restlessness, though, so I'm not to distressed about it.  The new year, with all its talk of resolutions and recollecting the successes and achievements of the past year makes for a prime environment for restlessness.  
While restlessness is accompanied with stomach knots and uneasiness, I am glad for it in some ways.  Usually when I feel restless I have a strong urge to simplify life.  To purge all the unnecessary clutter and get down to what really matters.  I suppose that is all in an effort to find some clarity.  To weed out all the excess voices, all the dust accumulating in the corners of one's mind and surroundings, and to seek out the still, small voice of truth.

 

dress/marshalls :: shirt/courtesy of ruche :: tights/fred meyer :: boots/courtesy of blowfish hat + bracelet/courtesy of lulu's :: necklaces/courtesy of adorn by sarah lewis photos by Dan
In 2014 I want to go on a kind of proverbial soul seeking journey.  I don't really need to physically go anywhere, it's more of an inward journey towards finding why I matter.  I've always had trouble extricating my job or career from who I am as a person.  I want, maybe need, the two to align, which is one reason I've never pulled the trigger on opening a retail shop, even though I've thought it would be fun and something I might actually enjoy.  I just don't feel like I'd find fulfillment when it came to the fact that I was simply one more shop where people buy things, spend money on stuff that they probably don't really need all that much, and contribute to the wastefulness of American culture.  I suppose that sounds overly dramatic, but it's my thought process when I think about opening a retail shop.  I go through various similar thought processes when I think about different career moves, or just personal decisions and goals.  I will fully admit to probably over-thinking things.  So it goes. 
Anyways, soul seeking journeys.  I've always felt led by Frederick Buechner's quote, "Your vocation is where your greatest passion meets the world's greatest need" but have never really found where that intersection meets.  It could be due to having too many passions and not feeling like I have enough energy to do all of them.  Another relevant quote? "You can do anything, but not everything." (David Allen).  I've always wished I could live many lives, picking a different career or vocation for each, rather than being stuck living one life and being forced to pick which things I want to do during my time on Earth, and which ones I have to let go of.  At the same time, I know that I have (hopefully) many years ahead of me, and I don't need to do just one thing my whole life.  I can reinvent my life, my goals, my career, at any point throughout my life.  There's a lot of pressure on 20-somethings to have everything figured out, have a career, a spouse, etc, but it's important to realize that that's not entirely realistic all the time, and self worth isn't dependent on whether or not I'm working toward becoming a CEO, or getting my Ph.D., or becoming a mother.  I have plenty of time to do those things.  Maybe all of them, maybe none, or maybe other things I haven't even thought of yet.  

 

siren song.

I've been riding a wave the past year, and I feel like I've reached the crest.  I want to go home, which is a broader sentiment than I feel those five words communicate.  I heard the siren's song in the distant hum of a small prop plane floating above as I walk Dusty this morning.  It's a sound I've heard my whole life, but these days it's a rare pleasure steeped in nostalgia rather than a daily soundtrack.  Growing up on the shores of Alaskan lakes, not a day went by that wasn't punctuated by the shrill buzz of a plane taking off, or the soft whirr as one landed.  We had our own small plane, a Cessna 180, which was parked at the dock at the bottom of the hill behind our house.  As the oldest child, I was the one put in charge of certain float plane duties.  I was the one who pumped the floats to make sure any water that had leaked in, either from rain or lake water seeping in during take-off or landing, didn't add extra weight to our flight.  Stopping a float plane at a dock involves cutting the prop close enough to the dock that you drift in, but far enough that you slow down enough to not slam into it.  It also involves jumping off the floats as soon as you can hop to the dock in order to catch the plane's struts and stop the forward motion.  I loved these duties.  I felt strong and important and capable, even if they were duties that were relatively simple.


 

In the winter, planes kept outdoors needed to be covered to ensure that ice and snow did as little damage as possible.  Snow also needed to be kept off the wings, otherwise the weight would snap them.  In more recent years our plane has been kept indoors in a hangar, but I vividly remember going with my Dad in our Toyota Landcruiser to the airfield to sweep snow off the wings.  One year there was so much snow that the pile the plows had made was taller than the planes.  I spent more time scaling the mountain of snow than helping, that time.  Planes also needed a cover on the engine, in order to keep the engine warm enough to start.  I always thought those looked like giant sleeping bags for planes.  I remember helping Dad lash the covers down, bringing the elastic straps with plastic balls on the ends to fit in their little nooses.

Tacoma doesn't have a lot of small plane traffic.  The planes I hear most often these days are C-17s on final approach to the nearby Air Force/Army base airstrip.  Every once in a while, though, I'll hear the familiar buzz of a small plane and intensely miss sitting in the kitchen watching planes land on the frozen lake.
photos from my Dad

on the outside looking in

This past weekend I was in Sitka, AK to surprise my grandparents with a big family gathering for Christmas.  All of their children were there, and all of the grandchildren, save one, were also present.  I wonder what it must be like to be in the December of one's life, surrounded by the family you created.  I feel blessed beyond words for this family.  So many families are plagued by death, illness, family feuds, divorce, or some other schism which has fractured the family and made family gatherings less than joyous.  While our family is certainly not immune to familial strife, there is an overwhelming sense of love and peace amidst the multi-generational gathering.  It is a shame that I missed out on so many years of my grandparents, due to being young and not understanding their significance and fascinating lives, as well as living a plane flight away which limits visits significantly.

Now they're into their 90's and I wish I had as many years ahead with them as I have behind.  I'm seeking out ways which I can continue to commune with them, even if they end up passing on soon, through taking the baton on their projects.  Both my grandma and grampa were rather creative people.  My grandma hand illustrated dozens of publications, from official nurse midwife childbirth guides for remote native Alaskan villages to yearly christmas cards and family announcements.  My grampa carved bowls, spoons, plant vases, napkin holders, and could make nearly anything.  For one of my childhood christmases he made me a mobile closet for my american girl doll (Samantha).  Another christmas he gave us all scale models of a dog sled which he made exactly how a full size version would be made, only about a food long.Their house is full of his little boxes and spoons, and so is mine.  As I sit here typing, a plant grows out of one of his hanging basket containers, decorated with carved Tlingit designs on each side.

I've been wanting to start carving spoons, as he did for decades, and recently found a pair of salad utensils at the thrift store to start experimenting with carving.  One of his "famous" designs is a pair of salad utensils with a fish carved into the end of each handle.  Every member of my family has one.  I received mine as a wedding gift and he's made ones for the other grandkids too, just in case he doesn't live long enough to see their weddings.  While in Sitka I found a whole box of salad spoons and forks he carved from scratch.  In the box were two drawings my grandma had done which were intended to be wood burned into the handles.  A dog sled for one of the set, and a native in a kayak spearing a whale for the other.  Grampa let me take them with me to finish.  His eyes are now too bad to carve any more.

Coming back to Tacoma I feel a little bit like a fish out of water.  I've never been able to shake the feeling that my home will always be the Last Frontier.  Going back is like sinking into the warm water of a most perfect hot spring, enveloping me with the feeling that I am where I have always belonged.  Perhaps it is more fierce because Alaska truly does flow through my veins.  I didn't grow up anywhere near the village where my people spent centuries fishing, but in many ways Alaska feels like one big village, especially in comparison to living "Outside."  I never thought much about that term, which all Alaskans are familiar with, which describes anywhere outside of Alaska, usually the Lower 48.  But when you are "Outside" and you come back to Alaska it does feel a bit like you were outside in the cold and you are stepping back into the warmth of your cozy home.

 

on the beach.

Little Dust is back to her chipper self this week after last week's bout with sickness.  These photos are from Thanksgiving when she got to run around on the beach and explore sea smells.  She even waded into the water a bit, though she wasn't interested in going any deeper.  We'll have to take her swimming in the summer when the water is warmer to see how she feels about being an aquatic pup.  I have dreams of corgi flops.

 

potato stamped wrapping paper

I bought a couple rolls of Kraft paper last week because I planned on hand stamping it and using it as wrapping paper.  I wasn't sure how I wanted to stamp, at the time, but I figured I'd figure it out later.  I'd stamped paper with a pencil eraser in the past to create mini polka dots, but that was more time consuming than I wanted, since I'd be needing to wrap multiple gifts.  I remembered making potato stamps back in the day, and thought I'd see if that worked, and it did!  I haven't done potato stamping since elementary school, but I love it!  it worked perfectly for my wrapping paper. 
I just used a little potato and cut a triangle into it.  I think that simple shapes would probably work best for potato printing, but if you want to go crazy with it, I'm not going to stop you.  Little simple Christmas trees would be super easy to cut into a potato as a stamp.  I used a stamp ink pad to do my stamping, but acrylic paint would probably also do the job, though it might cause the paper to wrinkle, since paint is wet and may cause the paper to warp when it dries.
Since the paper is simple, I kept the bow simple and just used baker's twine and tied on a sprig of evergreen for color!