With All Her Glory, presenting........Summertime! (and the meaning of true beauty)

My oh my oh my. How a handful of summer days can change everything. (AKA, this is gonna be a novel-long blog/ diary entry, yikes)

For some time now, it has been warm, hot, gloriously sunshiny and summery around these parts. I believe June 21st was the last time I felt cold. The 7-month winter really did a number on my psyche, and I apologize greatly to those who listened to my angry complaining and sometimes emotional breaking-down around the first half of June (namely my husband and my sister...but also a few other sisters). On that last day of cold, June 21st, I started ye crazy ol' Aunt Flo and even though Pollock Pines got to be around 66 degrees that day, I WAS FREEZING. Just for a tidbit of period trivia, I read that on the first day of your flow, a poor girl's basal body temperature drops significantly, causing the temperatures outside to feel quite different to the lucky lady-in-red than to any nearby person that is NOT sporting the rag. (Could be a good thing if it's 100 degrees outside!)

Anyhow, enough piddly explanation of my misbehavior. Since that day, SO MUCH HAS CHANGED!!! That first summer night, longest night of the year, I had a great realization as I stayed in my house alone whilst all my dear friends were celebrating together. I was cold and in a bad mood and didn't want to put that yucky energy on my friends. I had been feeling rather gross for a couple of months, especially hard on myself, on the way I look, on the process of aging, and that day had been a sobfest on and off all day. An emotional rollercoaster about to absolutely WRECK! But instead of wrecking.....some kind of smooth sailing began. Something inside of me found peace. I stepped out onto my lovely 3-sided forest deck and leaned over in awe at the sunset and majesty of the wild pine trees. I became in touch with a feeling of being "present" that I hadn't had in WAY TOO LONG. I stopped wishing and wanting and needing and I just stopped and noticed all the wild nature and life around me, and remembered how much I have done in my short 34 years. The knowledge of my hibernating self came pouring through. I actually felt pretty for the first time in months, just standing there alone. I remembered who I really am and who I have been for years, but who, for some reason, I had been losing track of for a little while. I remembered that I am a girl that doesn't think that looks are the most important thing in life (AT ALL!!!), that it is a beauty inside that is quite more powerful and shining and real and wonderful than any pretty dress or perfect weight or sweetly golden complexion. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen, but wisdom in personality and creativity and kindness and truth-seeking in a soul is a rare thing. I remembered that experience and knowledge in life becomes the realest beauty. And that just noticing the beauty in the world around is a GIFT of beauty. And kindness, peace, caring, creativity, and nurturing ARE beauty too. And that in order to stand up to the materialism that exudes from every billboard and magazine and so many conversations around me, I MUST ALWAYS REMEMBER THE TRUTH about such things, as well as do my best to demonstrate. Which also collides with the truth about love. It was quite a night sweet epiphany for me, and it was the night that summer really did begin. I have never felt cold since. But I have felt: inspired, excited, warm to the boned, sweaty, carefree, whimsical, and powerful.



And since then I have: taken a day trip up Silverfork Road with my husb,


laid on the hot sands at the American River drinking beer with my Heather sister, visited my awesome 98 year-old grandma in Sacramento and ate at McDonald's of all places with her and my dad!,

hosted a stay at my house with my lovely sis-in-law and her three amazing kids, played a Coal Beautiere show in Grass Valley that I was super scared of but it turned out going swimmingly well, watched my cat Grabby bring a few lizards into my home and place them on the living room floor (where I promptly had to catch them under a clear pie pan with a record slid underneath)



purchased an annual pass at the local lake and swum many times in its blue turquoise waters,

celebrated a friend's, Rebecca Pangbroehrn's, birthday at her sweet Sacramento garden home,


dined with her and our husbies at one of the best restaurants in Sacramento, which she manages and her brother owns...called Magpie ( they are like 95% organic and the food is BRILLS), received a colourful and descriptive letter from a dear friend (Ryann Savino) who is currently working in Maho Bay, in the Carribbean, on the isle of St. John,

stayed a sweet dusty summer night on Lake Spaulding at the annual Nevada City Boat Party (and it was my favorite year there yet to date),
got an awesome sunburn, and to top off all the fun....................QUIT MY JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That last one may not seem like the best thing, but it really was the best thing for my soul.

(And I also have some greats of the Boat Party coming off my Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim...with all its 35mm impromptu and vignettes. I can't wait!)

So now I have so many more adventures to look forward to. I have a friend's wedding and all-girl gathering coming up in the next week, overnight hikes to go on, a desert/ LA road trip to plan, Wednesday Hot Summer Nights in Nevada City- where vendors all display their crafts and food and you drink in the street and say hi to all the friends, another road trip to Santa Rosa and Russian River Brewery, a Coal Beautiere show with an amazing Portland band called John Heart Jackie at the Cozmic Cafe (which Jacob and Alisa Mingle now owns THANK GOD!), and the Nevada City Film Festival to volunteer for the weekend of August 19-22. And because I have been thinking about all things work-related so deeply.... I think I am going back to school for this semester and taking some real, downhome, web publishing classes! I might try a minimum wage job or something just a couple days a week, but I honestly just want to have a pretty open schedule, learn a bit more about html and web designing programs, and get a little something extra next tax year when Art and I look super duper poor on paper.

Besides all the summery shiny happiness portrayed here, I really want this blog to be about remembering the truth. I want to be able to look back here and remember that I shouldn't get sucked into the system, no matter the endless winters or downheartedness in general. The typical American system, the worldly system even, is to be sucked into superficiality, materialism and consumerism. Those things cause us to judge ourselves so very harshly as women, to compare ourselves to each other constantly, to be jealous of each other, to futilely attempt to buy our happiness, but worst of all- to forget and abandon the wonderful beauty and creativity that lives so strongly within every one of us. Our women hearts are strong, are dramatic, are sweet, are beautiful, are imaginative. Our struggles are beautiful too, they are part of our experience and they become our strength when we overcome them. One time I visited a girl in Portland who had no mirrors in her house. It was about seven years ago, and I remember thinking it was a little overboard or something. But lately, I have often wished there were no mirrors in my house because they only make me feel worse than I actually feel. I know it's so selfish to go there. It's not like I am disfigured or unhealthy or disabled. I know it's so selfish. But nevertheless, this world IS SO VERY prejudiced in it's accepting of only certain kinds of beauty, and that causes us girls constant self-criticism. I hate it. It's not fair how brutally the world treats unconventional beauty, and how sugar-ly and stupidly sweet it is to girls with the regular old pretty looks. Bleah! How boring! I want to live in my mind as though there are no mirrors around me for me to look into and see only faults. I want to be stronger than the mirror. I want to especially set a good example for girlies and women of the future, because being obsessed with other interests and activites in life besides looks, clothes and money is the actual road to success. It doesn't have to be college, it can be anything that makes your heart happy. But judging oneself harshly is the surest way to falter on the path.

It's one of my only goals in life, to live strongly and feel beautiful inside no matter my imperfections on the outside, to overcome the materialism and to be the best example possible to all people around me (provided they are around me on a good day! jeez!) I know it's quite a quest, but I know I will go all the way, and I know it will be worth it.