Happy New Year everyone and welcome to a new decade!   I can’t believe the aughts are over as I clearly remember New Years Eve 1999 and being so excited to ring in the new millennium.  And now the first ten years are over.   How fast it has gone.

My friend Ken sent out an email highlighting his personal accomplishments over the decade and it was clear that he had blossomed from a tiny sapling with little feeler roots into a fine strong tree with long roots that sprawled over great lengths.  And I’ve had the privilege of witnessing his growth.     Well, his email spawned off a host of emails as folks started sharing their stories.   It was quite moving and awesome to read about and remember with friends all that they’d done and to learn a few tidbits about them as well.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been pondering his email and been reviewing in my mind all that I and we (Bruce & I) had done in ten years.    While I would categorize the 90’s as the decade of being serious, focusing on my education, landing my first professional job, working to climb the corporate ladder, slowly saving my hard-earned money, and being very LEFT brained;  I’d categorize the 00’s as the decade of having more fun, exploring lots of RIGHT brained activities, and climbing the consciousness/spiritual ladder, pushing my boundaries as a soul, looking for my higher purpose.     Physically I think this change has manifested through my hair – in my business, corporate days (which was from my mid- 20’s to 40) I had very short, tidy, professional hair; and now, in my new incarnation, I’ve let my hair down so to speak and it’s the longest it’s been since I was a teenager!

It’s been a wild ride Mr. Toad!   Here, in no particular order, are some of my achievements:

• Bought on a whim in 2000 a beautiful 5-bedroom house on the garden isle of Kauai.  Turned it into a vacation rental property, learning as I went, to manage people and manage a property.  Had the opportunity to go there 12 – 15 times, hosting most of my friends and family over five years.   Saw bioluminescence in action, was proposed to on my birthday on the back porch, swam in the Blue Room many times, laughed a lot and drank many, many fine blender drinks.   Sold it in 2005, miraculously at the height of the market, and made quite a bit of money which has subsequently changed my life.

• Co-created with Bruce our wedding in 2002 soliciting the help of many of our friends.  What a great party it was!   Who can forget Bruce’s speech (titled “Love Is Cheap”; transcripts available for those that missed it!), the bloodletting part of the ceremony, and the after-party on the Green Tortoise bus?   I also witnessed the joining of many, many of our friends and family including L&S, P&D, J&D, L&D, K&D, J&K, L&S.

• Went to five Burning Mans and three Kiwiburns.  What a liberating, mind-opening, life changing experience that first one was!  It shattered all my perceptions of what ‘adulthood’ was supposed to be about:  hard work, saving for the future, being serious.  NO!  What I saw and witnessed was that it was perfectly okay for adults of all ages and all walks of life to tap in to their ‘inner child’ and play, experiment, dance, sing, make art, wear shiny glittery outfits, and have FUN!   That spawned off my foray into sewing, hoola hooping, poi spinning, and lots of other right brain activities and helped me become a much fuller and dynamic person.

• Slowly and finally came to love the Elf tribe (you all know who you are).  This merry fine tribe of friends in San Francisco brought much laughter into my life.    There were years of Monday night gaming where I’d join in on ‘boys night’ and whooped ya’all’s butts in RA and sometimes in others; many fine New Years and ski trips at the Jimhaus in Tahoe; many, many parties and gatherings at our place on 23rd Street; several en masse holidays to Kauai, New Zealand, Iceland, and Paris;  the building of the dome and the creation of Elfenland theme camp at Burning Man (who can forget the bullhorn exchange program, Martina’s 40th birthday party, Jell-O shots, and all the frantic ups and downs of logistically getting 25 people’s stuff to and from the playa!  Oh the drama sometimes!);  the beer festival at the Toronado;  evil jungle prince at Suriya Thai;  Kelly’s birthday drag parties; 4th of July parties at Tom’s;  and much, much more.   My life has been enriched because of you.

• Saw many of my friends bring wonderful new beings into the world.  Had the honor to attend one birth and have had the privilege of being an auntie to several friends’ children (H, M, & E) and finally at the end of 2009, became a full-fledged blood auntie to my niece Sienna.   It has been great to watch these littlies grow and I hope to be a good mentor to them some day.

• In a very short period of time (1 ½ years start to finish), thought about, discussed, researched, and moved & migrated to New Zealand.  Radical life change!  Sold our SF flat (a VERY traumatic experience getting out of our TIC-partnership and lost a 15-year friendship because of it) and shipped a 40’ container filled with our life to NZ.   Needless-to-say, it was a very emotional journey to make this decision, to leave our warm comfortable San Francisco nest, and strike out together, into new land, new territory, new lifestyle.   I still sometimes think I’m in a dream, not really believing this is my life.     Soon to be four years gone, it has been a tremendous adventure.   I live in the country, I am semi-retired at 46, I attempt to grow my own food.  I own a ride-upon mower, three cars, and have a dog.   I know a lot about growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs.  I can build a compost pile, hammer a nail, make a mean jam, and wield a chainsaw.  Oh my gosh, it’s so fun (usually!).

• It has been a decade with Bruce, my crazy mad-scientist life partner who has loved me, challenged me, and shown me so much.   We are incredibly different people and together we are an incredibly powerful couple.   There has been much joy, much sadness, much emotional everything with Bruce.  It is never boring.   I have learned a lot about myself, pushed and confronted my emotional baggage, and worked hard to evolve into a higher-conscious being.   These four years in New Zealand have allowed us to deeply explore our purpose and ourselves.  Who are we?  How do we want to be in this world?  How do we want to live?   I’ve been introduced to many new concepts such as permaculture, biodynamics, and metaphysics; I’ve read books and attended workshops on meditation, anusara yoga, nature spirits and devas, laughter yoga, tonal healing, drumming, reiki, non-violent communication (NVC),  emotional freedom technique (EFT), and oneness blessing;  we’ve taken singing lessons together and performed a duet at my sister’s wedding, something I NEVER thought I could or ever would do.   We keep pushing the envelope seeking deep knowledge of ourselves and deep connection to our surroundings.

I can’t wait to see what the next decade brings.  2012 is in the collective consciousness whether you believe in it, whatever ‘it’ is, or not, something big is happening, right now, right here.

Would you like to share some of your accomplishments from the decade?  I’d love to hear from you!

Let me explain.

Right after we had our divine intervention, we were talking to our builder friend and jack of all trades person Pete, Mr. Worlds Fastest Indian, as Bruce likes to call him, cuz he can do EVERYTHING!  He can build, he can plumb, he can do electrics, he can join (do woodwork), he does it all.  We share similar ideologies about sustainability and general worldview, and we consider him a good friend.    So we were telling Pete about our change in plans and he said “GREAT, I want to help you achieve your dreams and I can free up my schedule to work for you.”   To which we said, “GREAT, we so need your help”.

Pete lives in Oamaru, about  4 hours south of Wainui, and has an awesome 1 acre permaculture haven.  We’ve seen Pete’s work and have always admired his inventions and cleverness to make things very cost-consciously.   Pete agreed to come up to Wainui 10 to 14 days a month to start working on projects.   Our top three needs:  get irrigation into all the gardens so we can stop carrying buckets of water around this summer;  remodel the outbuilding (the separate building next to the kitchen) and convert to two bedrooms and a combined full bathroom and laundry room;  and install a better heating system into the house before next winter.    Then remodel the entire kitchen and a host of other small things.   We’re talking about a year+ of work given Pete’s timeframe constraints.  But of the three things one gets from a building project – fast, cheap, good – we will hopefully get cheap and good as we will save money by being involved in the project ourselves, and we will create something beautiful and with personality as Pete is a craftsman.   And we hopefully get to have fun to boot.

Pete’s been here every month for the last three months.  The irrigation system is in and we now have taps and piping to the orchard, side garden, lower paddock garden, and backyard garden.  That’ a lot of irrigation!  It’s all rigged to work on one master timer initially so we can get it going for summer and we can improve upon it over time.   Total cost for materials and labour – about $3,000.

We’ve started work on bedroom #1 in the outbuilding which happened to be the worst of the three rooms.  The floorboards were rotting out, there were no interior walls, and it was a bit dark.    Our goal is to make the room bright, warm, and functional to fit two single beds.

Bright = add new window.   We just happened to have an old villa-styled window hanging in the garage and voila, window has been installed.

Warm = insulation.  We’re putting R3 in the ceiling and R2.2 in the walls and floor.  The answer to insulating the floor area was to raise the floor since we could not get under the building to put in under-floor insulation.  Voila – floor has been insulated and raised about 3” and most of the walls and ceiling are done.  We’re using plywood for the walls and floor rather than gib (also known as sheetrock) as Pete thought it would be structurally better as there is some slight curvature in the exterior walls and framing since the building is so old.

Functional = thinking outside of the box.  The room is only about 10 feet x 6 feet which is too small to comfortably fit two single beds, so to solve this need, we’ve created a loft.  One single bed will fit in the interior room and then there’ll be room in the loft for another single mattress.

We’re still a ways off from completely finishing this room but it will be great when it’s done!

After a very long wait and for what seemed like eternity during our wet and cold winter, the excavator people finally rang up and said they were ready to come work on the foundation for the Total Span garage.  This happened while I was gone in October.  They came and had to scrape out a LOT of soil to get to solid ground from which to put the concrete foundation.

In November, the concrete people finally came to put in the foundation.  Easy in concept, not so easy in reality as the logistics of getting a concrete truck up our hill is quite tricky.  They could not get a truck to the actual site, so they had to have a pump loaded on a ginormous truck park on the hill about 40’ from the site and pump the concrete over the trees and down to the site.   Boy did that make a lot of noise that morning!

Next, foundation inspection scheduled and completed without any problem.

Then we waited patiently to have the Total Span crew come and erect the garage which is entirely weather dependent for unique to New Zealand, spring time brings lots of winds and the garage cannot be built in windy conditions.  So we wait and if the weather is right, the boys will come.  I got a call one day when rain was forecasted for the next few days, and they said, “We’re coming.  We can build in the rain.”   And so a crew of 5 and a burly ol’ black lab showed up and in six hours, they had that garage built.

And almost lastly, we next waited for the garage door to be installed, as that’s a separate process, installed by a separate person.   And within a week, at the end of a lovely day, two men came with our garage door firmly tied to their trailer, and they got the door on.

We have a garage!   To fill with…….. STUFF!     We still have to finish dealing with drainage issues and then get a final inspection and sign off but we’re 95% there.  Total cost = unknown as we have not seen any invoices from the excavator or concrete people.  Garage cost = $10,500 + building permit = $800.

And so, the beat goes on, another day passes, we are getting things done!

PS:  Sorry about the strange formatting of the photos.  I just got my site updated and am still learning how to navigate around it!

Feliz Navidad, Buon Natale, Merry Christmas.

I can’t believe Christmas is a week away.  I’m so not ready.  Being in the southern hemisphere doesn’t help either as my mind just can’t make the association between the long days and warm weather and the concept of Santa on his sleigh.   I haven’t even had the desire to put up any Christmas decorations.  Christmas means winter to me, a time for warming by the fire, eating heavy foods, spending time indoors with friends.  So I think I’m going to start a new tradition and celebrate Junmas -  around June 24th – the southern hemisphere’s answer to Christmas.

Nevertheless, the world-acknowledged-Christmas is coming and I’m less than 24 hours away from boarding a plane for a family holiday gathering in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  First stop, San Francisco, where I will have a few days to see a few friends, shop, and get into the holiday spirit.  And then me, Joy, David, and baby Sienna will jet off to Meixco where we’ll be meeting up with our parents, David’s parents, and David’s sister and her boyfriend for a 10 day holiday in the village of Conchas Chinas.

We’ll be staying in a 5 bedroom hacienda complete with private swimming pool.   Score!  Average temperatures for December range from high 70’s/low 80’s (22-26) during the days to mid 60’s (15) at night.   Tropical holiday – my favorite!

Bruce, unfortunately, will not be joining me as he was not so keen to go to the US and Mexico.  So he’s staying behind and will have his own adventures, likely going to the world Rainbow Gathering for a week over New Years.

Oh, speaking of New Years, this one is going to be quite special as there’ll be a full moon on the eve of Dec 31st and actually, it’ll be the second full moon in December, which is called a Blue Moon.   We’ll be ushering in 2010 (where has the decade gone!) under such auspicious circumstances.   So no matter where you are, no matter which hemisphere, no matter with whom you’re with, may you feel the love of the universe, the love of your family, and the love of yourself showering over you.

Peace & love,
Kathy

Nina and Bruce bonded very well together in my absence and now Nina recognizes us both equally as her pack leader!  She’ll follow either one of us around and especially likes Bruce when he gives her raw possum meat!

Last week we went over to Tobi and Alex’s house to get our first grooming lesson from Tobi.     With all our new purchases splayed out, we began the 4 hour session, slowly learning how to trim, clip, wash, dry, and cut her.

OMG!  She went from a cute little shaggy tomboy pup to looking like a prima donna poodle girl.

Too much for me.  I want her to be a rugged farm dog.  And it didn’t take long….  here’s what she looked like a few days later, after romping in the freshly cut grass.  Notice the furry possum leg in front.  Yuk!  We’re teaching her that possum legs are ‘outside toys’.  HA!

We’re one happy family unit again!

Can I just show you how cute she is?

Week 1:

Week 2.  Everyone gets involved.  It takes a village to raise a child, ain’t that the truth!

Week 3.  We’re finally getting out and about.  And she’s growing like a fiend.  8 lb 9 oz!

This IS what cute looks like!

Here’s a bit of a photo montage of my trip.

First stop – Portland – to see several friends:  Kat & Andrew, Scott & Anne, Ken & Christina, Sola & Inayat at Riversong, and Sebastian.   And thank you Kirk and Jim for coming up from Arizona!  What a busy few days we had.

We played Rockband and went sightseeing:

Lunched with Sebastian and visited Sola & Inayat at Riversong Retreat:

 Back in San Francisco, I hung out with my gal pals for birthday celebrations:

 And BBQ’d with friends Mary, Darek, Wes, Anthony, and Mary and a few others:

And I basically hung out and had many lunches, coffees, and dinners with all my pals.

Jack and Nane, Kelly,  Mei:

 Lillian, Daniel, and baby Nathaniel:

Lashon, Darek, Roni & Ella:

 And of course family:  mom & dad, Joy, David, Sienna, and my sister-in-law Laura! More Sienna photos can be found here.

 and her name is Sienna Grace Guidi Wygant.

 Born Oct 2, 2009,  7:36pm PST,  7 lbs 14 ounces, 21 inches, to my most awesome sister Joy and handsome brother-in-law David.

 Babe and parents are doing fine and I will get to see them all in just a few days time.

 Yeah, I have a niece and she’s a libra just like me.  Need I say anything more?

Okay, I never thought we’d get to this.  But when our beloved lemon tree and lovingly cared for lemons started being eaten by possums, Bruce said ‘enough’!   And so came two Timms Possum Kill Traps, a highly recommended and supposedly humane method of possum control, and out they went by the lemon tree with carrot and cinnamon bait.

Within the first week, while we were gone, possum #1 was trapped & killed.  We had no idea how long it had been dead in the trap, so it got buried under the lemon tree.

Last week, Laura, who’s been staying up in the studio, said she heard and saw a possum snooping around the outdoor kitchen.  Bruce moved the possum traps to the studio and that night, the sneaky culprit was, well, killed.

Bruce was all keen on conducting his next mad scientist experiment:  cooked possum.  He busted out his book on animal butchery, sharpened up the knife, and went to work!  Laura & I stayed away but I was curious enough to pop over every so often to see how he was getting on.

Apparently pretty well!   With his bare hands, Bruce cut off the limbs and then skinned it.  And then it was a matter of getting out the entrails.

And then it went into the pot. Yuk!  Hmmm, possum pie anyone?

Apparently while Laura & I were gone,  Bruce had a bowlful of possum over rice.  I’m not so sure it was a winner as by the time we got back, the remains were nowhere to be found and I was told, had gotten buried under another tree!

Here’s our action packed live footage YouTube video Part 1;  and Part 2.    Watch them if you dare!