I found this post in my drafts. Apparently, I never posted it. It’s 5 months later now, and I’m well settled into my new home at The Wallow. What has happened and what has yet to come? Here’s the draft I wrote back in August:

“I won’t be moving to my new house in Tennessee until October. So much waiting! I’m reading up on bees and pigs in the meantime, as well as prepping for Burning Man and Alchemy, which happen between now and then. There’s lots to do, but I’m spending a lot of time daydreaming away, too.”

Burning Man is touted as a no-commerce event. It’s also viewed as a hippie/freak oasis miles away from the “default world”. The closer it gets to the event, though, the more grumbling I hear from people who are a little cynical about the ideals, because there is an insane amount of commerce going on.

Joshua and I have been trying to get pregnant for about three years, to one extent or another. We gave the non-medical route a year to work on its own. Then for a year or so we tried the half-assed medical route, which involved a doctor who would give me Clomid but not do much else. After two miscarriages, we spent several months on pause. Now, I’ve been added to Joshua’s insurance, and we’re ready to go the medical path to pregnancy, at least for a little while.

While Joshua and I closed on our new house in mid-September, we didn’t move until mid-October, because for the beginning of October we were participating in Alchemy, a Burning Man-related event in Georgia. I’ve tried before and failed, so I’m not going to attempt to describe a burn to you. If you’ve never been, you can probably tell from pictures whether it’s your kind of thing, in which case you should go. It’s always the pictures that speak the most to me about burn events, so I’ll just share some of the photos with you. None of these photos are mine. They are all borrowed from various artists from the Alchemy 2009 Flickr pool.

I’m away until next week at Alchemy, the Georgia burn, an event in my current home state that’s inspired by Burning Man. I hope to have some pictures up soon of this year’s event, but in the meantime, here are some awesome shots from Alchemy 2008 to give you an idea of the kind of fun I’m immersed in right now.

I posted here about how I planned to use parsley to induce my menstruation. Here’s the step-by-step information, process, and results.

There are lots of things to love about Burning Man, of course. This was my third year going, and there’s always a lot to wrap my mind around. This year, there was a gigantic slide that create a huge influx of patients to the medical center, an enormous Rubik’s Cube that you could try your hand at solving, a nearly-all-day dust storm on Saturday, and, of course, the thousands of awesome people to interact with.

I travel to a Circle of mountains. I step inside and live and know that pre-history is now and the future is now.

I was at a regional burn once, and an acquaintance who was new to the burn scene grumbled to me that she hadn’t seen any of this gifting thing that everyone was talking about. Five seconds after she was done speaking, someone ran up to us to give us some handmade soap. The “gifting thing” is an integral part of burns, and is truly everywhere when you are open to it.

I have some mixed feelings about it, but I’m going to use parsley this week to attempt to bring an early onset to my menstrual cycle. I’m currently on schedule to start bleeding at Burning Man, which wouldn’t be the end of the world, but wouldn’t be perfectly ideal. I’ve got plans to get laid as much as possible at Burning Man this year, and while menstruation rarely causes me any consternation since I use the Diva Cup, it does get in the way of sex, especially with new partners.