Me: "What wouldn't you do for $200/day?"
Sar'ivy: "Eat a Klondike bar!"

August, concisely:
got laid off, ran back home.

August, more fully:
Went to Mexico for an afternoon with Elyse & didn't get shot (Anton thinks that all one does in Mexico is get shot... good thing they're building a house 45 miles from there!), decided on a bridesmaid's dress for Elyse & Anton's wedding, got the phone call from the office 'letting me go,' as they say, got random pity-groceries from Elyse, couchsurfed in Las Cruces, visited Jeremy in Hobbs, visited Allison & Jason & alpacas in Las Vegas, camped (poorly) in Nebraska, and made it home just in time for Megan's bachlorette party only to fall asleep exhausted instead.

So, in sum, the entirety of the previous two months of traveling was unnecessary-- and definitely cost too much--but i can't imagine it any other way. The steam off of Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone, the sunset over Bellingham Bay, geckos in the desert, alpacas in the mountains, duststorms that made me believe in 1934 in Colorado.

And finally, arriving in Wisconsin once again.

The swamps by Wabasha up here seemed lavish after the desert. Water is a bigger blessing than any of us up here could realize... and i read Cadillac Desert, like, a decade ago, and i'm still internalizing it. It rained here last night, the dampness seemed foreign after all that blazing tan heat. Foreign, wonderful, and faintly how it should always be.

Being laid off really isn't as awful as i would have thought. It's weird, i did panic a bit of course, but on the whole i've been fine with it. Basically i've been in much worse positions before, and even with the economy stuff going down i'm not too worried about finding another thing to do.

i have:
--a car
--a laptop
--prescription sunglasses
--almost a year of worthwhile work experience
--the ability to pack up at a moment's notice
--the knowledge that i can put up with almost any situation that presents itself
--substantial progress on the student loans
all things i didn't have a year ago. And after all that traveling, i have a good idea of where in the country i could live and be fine, and a much smaller dedication to any one geographic location--as long as a city nearby is big enough for me to take lessons of some sort, i'm good. And it should have trees. And really, what did i like about my job other than it was a job? Um, not too much. Paychecks/experience==awesome; lifestyle/locale==thesuckage.

Geography feels both much more arbitrary and important at this point. On one hand, the people that i'm good friends with (Ratty, Dave, etc) i'll always talk to, on the other hand there really are things one can do in one place but not another (more sailing in Bham than NM, etc). i love WI more than i did when i originally left, but at the same time nothing ever changes here, so it kind of doesn't matter whether i'm participating in the shenanigans that go down. Mom keeps freaking out that RGE is moving all the way to the cities: but really: NOT THAT FAR AWAY DEAL WITH IT.

So i'm applying for jobs, researching grad schools, hanging out at the farm, biding my time till i make a decision about what to do next. [Though, of course, i drastically underestimated the amount of work that needs to be done on the farmhouse before i can do my stuff: We cleaned the kitchen today, and not only had mom never heard of Magic Erasers (THEY'RE MAGIC! ERASERS! OMG!), i had to go into town twice for random supplies. The dryer needs to be rewired so we can move it, but first the 'front' (actually back, wtf?) bedroom needs to be cleaned, but first we need more shelves & probably 12 trips to goodwill, and so on. So on until infinity, but on the plus side mom has applied for a house improvement loan of some sort, so if that happens we'll get new doors, redo the porches, and if the back porch isn't falling in it's the perfect place for rabbits, and she agreed to have angoras if she gets rabbits again (the conversation, i might add, went something like, Me: "Though angoras aren't the best fiber animal, they only make so much fur in a year..." Mom: "Well, that's fine, you only knit so fast!"). So yeah, the idea of staying in Stanley was to be left alone for a bit to catch up on my reading and internetting, and already i'm pretty sure i've moved more things than should actually exist. What is up with the farmhouse? Really? Their (mom+John's) 10-year anniversary is this week, and though the house is markedly better than a decade ago (i haven't discovered any dead person's dentures lately), it's still impressive how much should be done for it to be 'habitable.' Gr.]

In Orson Scott Card's Alvin Journeyman series, one of the characters is a 'torch' which in the series means she can see/read 'heartfires.' In the series, a heartfire is like a soul that changes over time, depending on the possibilities/inevitabilites in that person's life. Peggy (chick in books) can read them, and as things change in the books for the characters she sees new paths forming and old ones dying out, and there's a physical/visual aspect to how she talks about the heartfires. Lately i feel like my heartfire has so many options i'm an obnoxious pompom or chia pet or something, no options stronger/more inevitable than any other, maybe even to the point of being frayed. Will i get the watershed job in Ozaukee county? Will i move back to Bellingham? Will i go to grad school in Iceland, New Zealand, or Texas? Will i move to NM? Will i stay here and raise angoras and alpacas on the farm? Will i sail with the S/V Denis Sullivan again? Who effing knows? For a bit, with the vagabonding, i was going to travel until i found a place that caught me, like a fish in a net; and it didn't happen and i'm 'home' again and i don't even know if i should be settling in here for years to come or if i should be frantically planning my next foray away. Stupid pompom heartfire, never coalescing into one strong cord.

Good lord, a lot of stuff has happened since i got back home, it's been a week.5 already. But since the library's closing, i must get into that next time.

And man, i've been picking burrs out of my hair all day. But that's okay.

'and i drove out of there with no one behind me--feels so funny to be free'--IG--  ¶ 17:28