the peaceful peacock

This is the tough­est part of cre­at­ing the con­tent for my fancy new website.

Learn­ing about the struc­ture of web design, the basics of html and css, the strate­gies behind SEO…that was easy com­pared to actu­ally sit­ting down and com­pos­ing an entire page about my own sweet self.  How do I pro­vide all the infor­ma­tion with­out sound­ing like an ego­tis­ti­cal ass?  How do I keep it interesting?

What do you actu­ally want to know about me?

There is a lot that has shaped my life:  where I’ve lived, my fam­ily, poverty, Mon­tana, the prin­ci­ples of Bud­dhism, lots of therapy…not to men­tion art and craft and math and sci­ence.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be using the blog here to fig­ure out what to put on my final Bio page for the web­site.  I’ve got a good grasp on the code, the col­ors have been cho­sen, the fonts and styles and links and puz­zle bits are all ham­mered out.

Now it’s time for the hard part.

What’s your approach on the dreaded “About Me” page?  Any words of wisdom?

The globe lamp.  This hung at my grand­par­ents house, sus­pended from a wooden wall attach­ment that my grand­fa­ther made decades ago.  When we would spend sum­mers in Butte with them, the glow­ing orb served as a night light as we slept.

We lived in Idaho then.  Chal­lis.  A min­ing town that is now inhab­ited by ghosts and a stub­born few.

My grand­fa­ther worked for West­ing­house, an elec­tri­cal parts sup­plier to the Ana­conda mine.  (You may have heard of their refrig­er­a­tors and dish­wash­ers.)  Since he was in sales, he often received bonuses or incen­tives and accord­ing to my mom, this lamp was one of those incentives.

It’s been around for awhile.  My mother was small when he brought it home and Ger­many was still one coun­try.  And then it split.  And now it’s one again.

It has always hung right above my bed, con­nect­ing me to my grand­par­ents even when we lived far away from each other.

Antarc­tica has become very famil­iar over the years.  I’ve watched our world evolve and shift, chang­ing names and faces but retain­ing the same basic structure.

This sim­ple glow of blue mes­mer­izes any­one who sees it.  Instantly.

…lessons in geog­ra­phy and his­tory and let­ting things change.

And I’m pretty sure I should move it up a lit­tle higher for awhile.

Yes­ter­day I wrote my first forum post on Etsy, which serves an oppor­tu­nity to help other crafters and artists who sell online.  The post explained how I wrote my busi­ness plan in con­junc­tion with how I travel (by the seat of my pants, with lots of stops for looky-looing along the way).

This reminded me that I have not shared any of the pic­tures of our trip to Ari­zona (which was, um three months ago), but the good news is that I have since learned how to make really cool col­lages.  So this is a tiny shot­gun view of how we travel and it”s pretty much a micro­cosm of how I view my busi­ness as well:

Happy busi­ness planning!

Last night as I was final­iz­ing the recipe for the no-name tea, I tried a cou­ple more com­bi­na­tions and just let loose.  In a flurry of flow­ers and herbs, I cre­ated five ~ yes, FIVE ~ new blends of sig­na­ture teas.

I was mov­ing from inspi­ra­tion, think­ing of friends and fam­ily from all walks of life.  With my hand on the warm and vibrant pulse of the cre­ative muse, I let go of expec­ta­tion and sim­ply opened the jars.

My mind’s eye grav­i­tated to my gypsy tribe ~ firedancers, hoop­ers, design­ers, witches, bel­ly­dancers, seam­stresses, djs, painters, mas­ters of clay…I hold them all with me daily thanks to the won­ders of mod­ern tech­nol­ogy.  Before the kids, we used to actu­ally see these friends at shows and fes­ti­vals and gath­er­ings.  Though every­thing is far away from Mon­tana, we used to hit the road with  what­ever money we could scrape together, a ticket in hand, and a long drive ahead, ready to give our work-weary bones a stretch.

Though we love to travel, our des­ti­na­tion is gen­er­ally a place where we can shake it down and get our freak on–something that we haven’t been able to do in the last few sum­mers of baby-pregnant-baby.  Well, the hor­mones are shift­ing back onto the reg­u­lar grid­line and this girl’s ready to rum­ble.  Ready to make my mama life and my music-lovin’-free-spirit-flyin’ col­orguard mesh into one com­plete world.  I have to give tech­nol­ogy some pretty seri­ous credit though–thanks to the com­mu­ni­ties I’ve been able to join and cre­ate online, my out­side tribe stays close to my heart all the time.

The Grate­ful Dead song Ter­rapin Sta­tion includes the words “Inspi­ra­tion, Move Me Brightly” and it’s a pop­u­lar phrase among my stitch­ing sis­ters online.  We use it in moments of funky exas­per­a­tion, in times of cre­ative clar­ity, and in those instances when we need to hear a word of sup­port from those who under­stand how our shoes fit.  When this phrase pops up in a sta­tus update, a choir of cheers and encour­age­ment usu­ally rises up right along with it–blowing the hinges off of the cre­ative doors and free­ing up all the good energy on which our cre­ative visions thrive.

Ask­ing the muse to take you by the hand and lead you to a place of higher con­scious­ness, a world within where the light res­onates with love and joy.

In deep­est grat­i­tude to my muse and my tribe, here at home and out there in all of the cor­ners of the earth and beyond, I present:

Move Me Brightly.

A highly sen­sual blend of fine organ­i­cally grown ingre­di­ents, includ­ing:  white tea, laven­der, rose­buds, cat­nip, and pep­per­mint.  Just a bit of caf­feine to push you through the rest of the day (15 mg), but not so much that it makes you twit­tery.  A smell so intox­i­cat­ing, your senses will rise into a moment of mys­tery and gen­tle grace with ease.

Move Me Brightly ~ for the mamas, the sistren, the inspired.  I offer this blend of Mother Nature’s finest to you in hum­ble grat­i­tude for so gen­er­ously and con­tin­u­ously shar­ing your visions of peace and beauty.  Thank you.

The give­away is still open through the end of today, so if you’d like to be entered please leave a com­ment below!  All entries on the pre­vi­ous post still count, don’t worry.  And come back tomor­row to meet the rest of the evening flurry.

As cute as my lit­tle beans are, being a mama is tough work.  Each and every day is pep­pered with breath­tak­ingly adorable moments like this one, but there are indeed times when the work of moth­er­ing becomes an endurance test that could take down any Iron Man com­peti­tor.  Easily.

A friend once told me that “rais­ing chil­dren is like being pecked to death by chickens”.

Exer­cises in deep breath­ing are essen­tial, hid­ing in the bath­room at times with a stash of choco­late also helps.

In honor of myself and moth­ers every­where, I have com­posed a new tea blend this week that is sure to inspire strength, a sense of calm, and a tiny moment of bliss when you really, really need it.  This is a light blend, made with organ­i­cally grown white tea, laven­der, and rose.

It smells like heaven and almost invol­un­tar­ily prompts those deep breaths.  Kind of a mama time out.

The tea will be hit­ting the pages of my etsy shop very soon, but first it needs a name.  Some­thing ele­gant and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the honor and beauty of moth­er­hood.  Some­thing that sounds relax­ing.  Some­thing this mother of a teether is too tired to come up with at the moment, so I think it’s time for a good old fash­ioned giveaway!

Leave a com­ment here or on Face­book if you have an idea, or leave a com­ment any­way if you’d like to try it and are too tired to think of a name.  Either way.  The win­ner will be cho­sen ran­domly and announced on Tues­day, May 11 some­time before I drag my weary self into bed.  Prize includes two reusable teabags made from organic unbleached cot­ton, two ounces of this beau­ti­ful hand­crafted tea, and a lit­tle satchel made from vin­tage fab­ric.  Oh, and a set of chop­sticks of course.

Thank you and good luck!

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