Four Years in the Making (2/9/26)

Almost, four and a half, actually. I started my aerial journey shortly after I turned 50, and I've loved it. In my mind, there's no better fun, full-body workout. It's increased my confidence in every aspect of my life.

I've played lyra (aerial hoop), dance trapeze, sling, and silks. I enjoy lyra, because of the immediate gratification I get from learning a new pose. Cool lyra poses require different grip strength, but I think I are easier to get into. I find lyra more of a mind game than a strength game.

I haven't played trapeze in a long while, because there just isn't enough interest to make a class worth it for the circus center. I completely understand, but I do love trapeze. Sling is great, and you can find a ton of videos online of people doing "aerial yoga" in a sling (hammock). But my heart has always been with silks.

Except that I'm terrible with silks. Rather, I was.

My heart has always wanted to play in the silks, but my body continued to fail me, so I'd take an intro silks class, get sad, and switch to lyra the next session. It was an unending cycle of back and forth.

One of the things holding me back with silks was my inability to climb. There are some fun things I could do from the ground, but getting up in the air opens so many more doors. I've kind of been bouncing back and forth between lyra and fabrics for a few years, but since last fall, I've been able to do session after session of fabrics, without interruption. I was also lucky enough, this session, to be able to afford to add in a second class - lyra - so I'm at the circus center twice a week.

What a difference being able to attend two classes a week has made in my strength with both apparatuses. I've been diligently working toward my Russian climb for the past few sessions, and, after four-plus years of failure and frustration, I finally got it!

First step

There's two!

Three! I'm actually off the ground!

I was beginning to think I'd never get it, but determination (and some really sticky rosin) paid off! I also was able to do it with my left side, but only two steps. I'm so incredibly happy and proud of myself for sticking with it. And I'm so thankful for an instructor who continued to work with me and encouraged me to keep at it. She never once made me feel stupid or less than for not getting this very basic skill.

I'm excited to get back to silks on Monday and give it another go, just to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke (even though I climbed and climbed every chance I had last class).

My Brain is Tired, Plus Pretty Pictures

Mid-October, I got a call from my boss. Our safety guy had been poached, I mean, borrowed, by another plant and would be out until at least the end of the year. Would I be interested in helping out here and there with the safety needs at our plant? My answer, was, of course, absolutely! I love, love my job in the lab, but we'd been fairly slow and I was starting to feel stagnant. Helping out in safety would engage my brain and keep me busy.

Holy cow, did my brain get engaged! I only had a few hours with our safety guy to go over things I needed to know to lead the weekly safety trainings and entering things into the corporate sites. When I say they poached, I mean, borrowed, him they did so very quickly. He learned he needed to be at the other plant, in another state the following Tuesday. I got the call asking for help on Thursday evening, which left Friday for me to get up to speed.

I've been exhausted since. Of course it wasn't just the two things I was tasked to do. After a couple of weeks, when I had gotten the hang of what I thought I'd be doing, a few more things got added on, and then the corporate people learned my name and next thing I know, about 75% of my day is safety and the rest in the lab. Thank goodness, my lab coworker can pick up my slack.

I learned last week that our safety guy is now going to be out of state until June, and he may choose not to return to our plant, which potentially leaves his position open. It's become pretty clear that I'm being groomed for his position, and for the most part, I'm game. The hardest part for me, if I took over his position, is that I'd have to leave the lab. I love the lab. I've poured my heart and soul into getting it running smoothly and efficiently. The thought of leaving the lab hurts my heart, even though I'd be given a chance to grow. 

It's a quandary.

On top of learning all I can about the safety side of things (and there is soooooooo much), I'm working on a book project. What little brain power I have left at the end of the week is spent sitting in front of my computer on Saturday morning trying to break down complex concepts into easy-to-digest coherent sentences. It's slow going. I'd like to complete a chapter a month, and have the book to the publisher by July. NaNoWriMo this ain't. Besides not having the dedicated time to sit and write for hours, like I did during NaNo, my 'spoons' are lacking by the time I get home at night.

It's no wonder, then, that in the evenings I'm doing low-brain activities. I've crocheted hats for the cats, yes I did, and am working on a few little amigurumi as gifts for the girls for this upcoming baking weekend. I'd better get a move on the last one! I only have tonight and tomorrow night to complete it.

Growing up, I was not a kid who played dress up. At all. I thought it was silly. But now, in my Feral Fifties, I'm having a great time dressing up the horses, the cats, and the outbuildings. I managed to get the Christmas decorations up for Whimsy and Maggie the day before the weather turned to crap.

The Magical Potting Shed (Maggie) in her Christmas clothes.

The Whimsical Treehouse (Whimsy)
with her Christmas colors on.

As I was standing on the stepladder, trying to get everything hung, I was feeling so grateful for my aerial classes, which have given me the confidence and strength to do things like this. (I was even more thankful for my aerial classes as the Bionic Cowgirl and I were building Whimsy! There was a lot of climbing, balancing, and strength required that came directly from my circus classes.)

The day after getting the decorations up, I woke up to hoar frost coating everything. I absolutely love looking at hoar frost, but don't love that in order for it to show up, humidity and cold are required.

Thanks to a tip from my tattoo artist, I was able to get a good close-up of the frost. She takes pictures of all of her tattoo work, and told me last time she uses the 2x setting on her phone's camera for better detail. I am by no means a photographer, but when I wanted to take a picture of the frost coating the red bulb, I remembered her telling me that and gave it a try. I love the results.

It didn't look like much from the
outside, but inside looking out
was gorgeous.

Two days after the hoar frost, the snow came. I have to leave for work before the sun comes up, and with these stupid shorter days, it's dark when I get home, so I asked L.E. to take 'first snow' pictures for me.

Though the outsides were decorated, I hadn't completed decorating the insides yet. There's not a ton that goes in each, just a small Christmas tree and a few decorations. Whimsy's decorations haven't changed much from last year: a tree, stockings for her and Maggie, and this year's addition, a chicken ornament for Mary Kathryn, Queen of the Retirement Home.

I'd hoped the lights would show
up better in the dark, but this is 
what I ended up with.

Maggie got no Christmas love last year, so all of her decorations, inside and out, are new. Since Maggie is named after Dame Maggie Smith, of Hogwarts fame, I tried to lean into the Harry Potter theme with floating candles. Jay helped me hang them, and I enjoyed turning them on with my remote-control wand.

She looks so warm and cozy from the outside.

The floating candles make me smile.

From the inside, looking out.

Eventually, Maggie's walls will be insulated and finished. I had the entire north wall insulated, but hadn't gotten around to hanging the OSB on that wall and the upper insulation blew down. I've hired Autobot and her boyfriend to do the finish work for me later this month. Right now, Maggie has become a catch-all, and I need to be able to hang shelves and organize her. She's also supposed to be our "guest house", so I need to get her warm and sealed up.

Baking Weekend is just two days away, so I hope to have some lovely updates from that to write about, and I'm hoping that my full brain will start to adjust to the new job so I have the energy to continue to blog.

Latte Coffee Candle

 Before I talk about our crafty day, I just wanted to give a quick update on the kombucha flavored with stuff I grew! The watermelon cucumber was so refreshing, I loved it. Jay had a bottle of the honeysuckle and enjoyed it enough that I'm going to try to gather enough flowers to make a half gallon of it. I only tried a sip of the grape the other night as I moved it to the fridge, but didn't get much grape flavor, so I've been letting it sit in the fridge a bit longer. This morning, when I looked at it, it had more color, so I'm looking forward to trying it with dinner tonight.

~~~

Each year, since I turned fifty, I've been trying to learn a new skill. Even though we don't have a family history of dementia and just a minimal history of stroke (Grandma Mary had one, but she was a life-long smoker), it's always in the back of my mind that I can do things to prevent, or at least increase chances of recovery. Not to mention, I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 90, so staying physically active is important. Hence the reason for learning new skills each year, in an effort to keep my neurons cranking out the myelin and exercising both sides of my brain. 

Since I've turned fifty, I joined the circus, learned to paddle board, learned to crochet, have been learning Italian, and tried picking up little skills here and there. Hell, Mom and I built Whimsy together - there was a lot of learning that went on, and is still going on, with that project. This year, though, I didn't have a big learning goal, which is where the little one-day classes are coming in handy.

I told you all of that so that you'd understand that I was already primed when I saw a Facebook ad for a Skill A Week. The intro cost was steeply discounted (I think I paid $15 for three months), so of course I signed up. I figured that this was something Mom and I could do together on Mom nights. Already, I'm behind because I have to order the supplies for each week's skills. It's a good thing the classes were so discounted! 

The first week's class was candle making, specifically a candle that looked like a latte. 

I forgot to take pictures of the process of making the ice cubes, but I did learn one really important thing, should I choose to make candles like this in the future: direct heat is your friend when melting high-temp gel wax. I tried using a double boiler. After 45 minutes, I gave up and went straight to direct heat. The gel was melted within five minutes. Now I know. It's a good thing that I followed the instructor's advice and made the ice cubed in advance, because if I'd waited until Mom got there, that's all that would have been accomplished.

Almost forgot to take this picture, too.

I chose to use pint canning jars, since I have an abundance of canning jars, and I know they can handle high heat. After we put the wicks in, we added the ice cubes and got started on melting the wax for the coffee and milk. The wax for the coffee/milk was a lower temp wax, so the double boiler was used effectively. We added in the scent, then split the wax into two pour jars: one to be the milk, the other to get colored for the coffee. Then, we started pouring the candles.

The milk went first,

then the coffee.

Pouring was the easy part, waiting for it to cool was the most difficult. Luckily, we'd planned to eat dinner and watch another episode of Reacher, which kept us entertained and not messing around with the candles as they cooled.

They looked like chocolate milk, not a latte once they cooled.

I reminded both Mom and myself that we needed to trust the process, and broke out the heat gun to warm it. The instructor said it would bring out the coffee color and we needed to "melt" the ice cubes to make it more realistic looking.

It worked!

But as it cooled, it started looking like chocolate milk again.

I think I was a little too generous with the heat gun and melted the wax too much. <shrugs> It happens. This was a ton of fun, and I'll likely make candles again in the future, though probably not something that requires more than one color.

Delayed Birthday Weekend

My birthday was last month, and I had a great time doing sister crafts with Nebalee. The following weekend, Jay and I went to a fancy dinner date in Denver, at a restaurant I'd been eyeballing for a year. Overall, I had a great 54th birthday, and didn't give it a second thought.

This past Saturday, though, I realized that I was getting a second birthday weekend. My present from Jay was to finish my circus tattoo, and my present from the Bionic Cowgirl was a one-day stained glass class. Yipee! I get birthday, round two!

All of my tattoos, of which there are many, are of things that I love. While I was hesitant to get my first pop culture tattoo, once I jumped in, I went all in. Over the past couple of years, I've added many things that I love and want to remember. Pop culture-wise: Supernatural, John Wick, The Walking Dead. Mom-kid tattoos: Belle reading from Beauty and the Beast, and Toad from Frog and Toad. Birthiversary tattoos: Conch shell (Key West), sea turtle (Costa Rica), Aztec firebird (Cancun), dolphin (Marco Island). Everything else I love in life: Estes and Skeeter on out on the trails; peace, love, and pew; book dragon, with books depicting each of the kids' (and the Gremlin's) birth years; my Aztec warrior.

I was lacking a circus tattoo, but struggled with finding one that really spoke to me. Jay and our tattoo artist, the Infamous Katie, collaborated to come up with the perfect one. I had the outline done a few months ago, so for my birthday, Jay offered to pay for me to finish it. I jumped at the opportunity.

They incorporated me into it,
not some random pic from the 'net.

My love of lyra and sling is incorporated,
and she brought in colors from my other tattoos
so I'm kind of matchy-matchy.

Jay also had some tattoo work done on Saturday. "Katie Dates" have become one of our favorite dates. We go hang out for a few hours with the Infamous Katie, who has become like a little sister to us, then we go grab something to eat. This time, since Jay had plans with his sibs after our Katie Date, we just hit Dairy Queen for an ice cream. I don't know about anyone else, but I am ravenous after a tattoo session, even if I eat before. 

On Sunday, Mom and I headed to the class she'd signed us up for. I love learning new things, and have taken a few one-day "taster" classes. They are great, because they give you a good introduction to a skill or a craft that I might be interested in, but without all of the expense involved in buying all of the equipment upfront. A couple of years ago, Jay and I took a welding class, which was a blast! This year, Nebalee and I took a glass fusion class; Mom and I took a soap making class (I still have several bars of "monkey fart" scented soap left); and Jay and I took a writing class. These one day classes can quickly become addictive. :)

The class I'd chosen for my birthday was a honeycomb stained glass class. I'd been eyeballing it since the beginning of the year, so when Mom asked what I wanted to take, this was it. The class was small, which I love, only six students, and we didn't have to do any glass cutting. The instructor had done that bit of prep work for us, for which I'm thankful.

We talked a little bit about the process, then jumped right into choosing our glass and laying out our projects.

Mom's

Mine

It was amazing to me to look around the classroom and see all of the different ways each of us chose to lay out our six pieces of glass. I'm not super creative, so I went with the layout that most closely mirrored the example on the wall. I did choose to add the round pieces as a bit of embellishment, but the reason for that is silly. When adding foil to the glass, it's fairly straightforward on pieces with straight edges, but when adding foil to the round pieces you get to shake each of them up in a little round container. It looked like a lot of fun, so I decided I wanted to do that, too. <grin>

Adding the foil.

After we wrapped everything in foil, and I got a giggle out of shaking up the container with the round bits, we started in on the soldering. Now, believe me when I tell you that just because I used to solder really well in high school, when I learned to do it on electronic components, doesn't mean I can solder well forty years later. Holy cow, I suck at soldering stained glass. Instead of a nice, tiny dot just to make a connection between a component and the motherboard, it takes a lot of solder with a big, unwieldy soldering iron to put the stained glass together. Both the Bionic Cowgirl and I struggled with this.

We are used to fine-tip irons,
these heavy flat-tipped ones were
hard for both of us to use.

Such ugly joints. I welded better than
this, and that's saying something!

Eventually, I quit dicking around with trying to make my solder nice and smooth and decided "it's good enough for who it's for". The finished products look pretty good, as long as you look at them from a distance.

My honeycomb found a place in one of Whimsy's big windows, and I'm not sure where Mom's is going to end up, but this was such a fun class. I'm not super creative, but I think I could really enjoy following some stained glass patterns in future. 

Update 8/20/25: Mom and I both found a place for our respective honeycombs and got pictures. They look so good in their new homes!

In Whimsy's east window.

Mom's is in the Lodge's kitchen window.

Birthday Crafts with The Best Sister Ever

Birthday #54 was last week, and I was traveling for work, so it was pretty low-key. Nebalee and I had planned a craft day for the Saturday after my birthday, and I was so excited about it. She and I don't spend nearly enough time together any more. A couple of years ago, we were doing monthly 5 and 10k, but life keeps getting in the way. The fact that we both love and enjoy spending time with our significant others is a hindrance, too. 

We had planned to make butterfly baths out of terracotta pots, but that became cost prohibitive very quickly, so Nebalee came up with an alternative craft - making garden totem poles. I looked at Pinterest for a few ideas and was pretty overwhelmed. I love me some crafts, but I'm not super creative or artsy. I do best when I can look at a few ideas and steal them to make my own, so that's what I did.

Our "practice" beam on the left.

I tried, and failed, to paint flowers
so I made Nebalee paint them for me.

Nebalee's flowers.

I wish I'd thought to do my flowers like this!

I'm always hashtagging my pictures
#WeLiveInAPostcard so it had to
go on the post.

After I saw Nebalee's dragonflies,
I made her add one to the flowers I'd 
previously made her paint.

Side-by-side. Mine is taller because I had to
sink it securely in the ground. I don't need the
wind treating this like the outhouse.

#BestSisterEver and I with our completed posts.

We planted hers in her butterfly garden.

This was such a fun craft! While I was initially overwhelmed with possibilities, once I settled down and decided to simplify the post, things went much better. Right at the very beginning, I had a thought of painting vines to wrap around each side, but I didn't like the way they turned out. You know what the beauty of painting is? If you hate it, you can just paint over it. So I did, and ended up with lady bugs, bumblebees, flowers, and our hashtag. Every bit of my garden pole makes me smile. 

I was determined to get my garden post planted right away, so the next morning I pulled out the auger and got to work. It's scary how fast I'm getting with the auger - it no longer intimidates me, so it's no big deal to just pull it out and dig a hole. Jay did come out to help me with the last couple of inches - I'm not quite tall enough to get the leverage over the top to dig down as far as I need sometimes. This was one of those cases, and when I saw all of the shale dust come out of the hole I understood why I came to a standstill with my hole digging.

I decided to plant my garden pole at the end of my newest arch. The arch was supposed to support the watermelon I planted. Unfortunately, my watermelon plants didn't make it. I may have been a little over-confident in my growing abilities this year.

After Jay helped me dig the hole deep enough, he broke up the flagstone for under my little arch, and helped me move my antique school bench from Whimsy to the archway. This was another one of those "it'll just take a minute" projects that sits and sits. With his help, it did take just a minute, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. This fall, I'll sprinkle some creeping thyme seeds in between the flagstone to germinate over the winter.

Just picture this next year with some sort of climbing edible plant.

The Bionic Cowgirl and I took a moment to enjoy
the new seating area.