where i've been

I've been riding my bicycle--my new bicycle! It is a bicycle with gears; I've been riding a single gear for over a year and distances and hills proved to be a little strenuous with her, but she is still my baby. my new gear bike is a Trek Portland (last year's model. The store I bought her from had a frame my size and had marked it down nearly $500; I could not pass. I call her burnt cause of her color.



I've put 314 miles on burnt in less than three weeks and most of those miles are from commuting to and from work and tooling around both the towns that I spend most of my time in--Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor.

I've also have been tending to raising up some plants in the back bedroom. I have a shitload of tomatoes ready to go, some cucumbers, a small variety of chilis and habaneros, parsley, bachelor buttons, and zinnias. Plus a tray of plants I bought from my favorite non-profit Growing Hope that I am just now ready to put in the ground (we've had a real spring; one with cool, cool nights and brisk sunshiny days). This tray includes fennel, cilantro, chamomile, and basil and some dinosaur kale and another kale from my friend A who runs Growing Hope.

Plus I have lots and lots of lettuce seeds (though one of my packages was just straight up empty when I opened it) and green beans and peas and beets (which I am getting in to the ground too late, but oh well).

Besides tending to my veggie gardens, I've also been trying to boost up our various perennial gardens (we have one in front that is shady, a small one along side of the north side of our house that gets minimal sun, one in the very back that needs more pea gravel for the paths and some massive weeding and mulching, and another on the south side of the house that leaves something to be desired.

But yesterday, I went to my sister's house (this house was the house my mother grew up in, and so it has all of my grandmother's gardening work etched into the yard). My sister is not a gardener; in fact, her yard--formerly my grammy's amazing garden--has gone to weed. So, my sister is converting this potentially gorgeous yard back to sod:(. But, I drove downriver yesterday and met my ma and grammy there and went to town digging up my grammy's treasured perennials. I claimed two bleeding hearts, four ferns, one woodrose, a slew of hollyhocks, some checkered lillys, an astilbe, a hearty geranium, a naked lady, a large hyacinth, and some ground cover that has dainty pink flowers on it. I dug em all up and brought them home and planted them all in the ground and now my body is sore.

Speaking of all of this planting. We tried three times last week to make kk pregnant. I have lost faith in this DIY process, but I am trying to stay positive for her even though for some reason i think the sperm is just not sticking.

We've got a good, good woman on our side, now. She is a midwife who does IUIs and sperm washing and all that stuff. We were going to try that all this time around, but kk ovulated earlier than we thought she would, so all of the timing for the jiz, the wash, the kid sitting, and the IUI process was askew. But, K finally has a script to get her progesterone tested and she will work this out next week.

so, here's to waiting yet again and getting my hopes up even though that feels ridiculous; planting things in the grounds; and riding bicycles often!

i'm still tired, but some reflections on a good day

this week has been pressing on my heart like an overloaded semi-truck. I am glad tomorrow is friday.

We really had an amazing start to the week (sans the fact that kk started bleeding again). Sunday was our bike ypsispring ride and festival. we had blue skies, sunshiny weather; great attendance and great moments of cohesion and goodness among people in community. That to me is what this bike ypsi is all about--folks coming together and creating sustainable, meaningful community! We succeeded and we will continue to succeed in making ypsilanti a super bicycle friendly community; we will be a presence on the streets and in the parks and in the common, shared spaces that we are fortunate enough to be able to walk through and ride through and exist in.



It was so excellent to have between 100 and 130 people out in the park enjoying simple food (all donated except for the hot dogs and veggie dogs), tooling around on bicycles, roaming by booths that focused on healthy living and bicycles (yet again bicycles), and lazing about in the fifth month's clear and crisp air.

But the day and the days up till the bike ypsi day drained my energy. By the end of sunday i could barely move and monday i had a hard time rolling out of bed and making my way via bicycle (yet again bicycles) to work.

And then work...oh work...oh the work...oh justice work...oh fighting for something that resembles some version of someone's or some people's justice. i will not go into detail about the horrendous abuses and violence and fucking shit that i soak up at work on certain days, but i will say that i searched out a new therapist this week. I looked for therapists who work with activists and found none.

So, while i love bike ypsi and i love helping to organize all of us people to do good and healing things in my own community, when my energy gets zapped and then i have to jump right back into my paid work with no quiet, no breaks, no nothing but the incessant reminders that we treat people like shit and they in turn treat others like shit and the cycle goes on and on and on, then i feel the crashing reverberations of a burgeoning semi riding the bones of my rib cage as if it were a highway to hell.

All in all, i am tired and I need to heed the words of Chickasaw poet, Linda Hogan, "You have to have time, and you have to have quiet. We don't take that often enough. I like to take a day off every week not to do anything. Not take off work to do other work, or chores, but take a day off. It's an incredible experience. Magic happens."

just so you know...

kk started her period again.

i am tired.

i do not feel like writing. it is not just cause she started her period.

these days are complicated and full of strife and joy.

i am tired.