Frozen days.....

The weather has become ridiculous lately.

Of course I (for some strange reason) forget that I live in the arctic, and when the blizzards blow in and we get to -70 degrees at night with wind chill...I am surprised.

It is really hard to describe to people what that type of cold feels like. It's not only the feel of the cold on your being, but the emotions that it produces, the mentality of the it all. There is no being 'warm' in the winter. It's more just making sure you are not going to suffer permanent damage. You learn to breathe a certain way so that the cold does not make you gag and so you don't suffer from lung shock and end up coughing for half an hour. You turn your head at that perfect angle so that the wind doesn't steal your oxygen away. You blink rapidly and squint a bit to make sure the ice freezing on your eyelashes doesn't prevent you from seeing. You try and relax your muscles so that they don't waste calories shivering. But most of all you change your mental perception. It's hard to do when every cell in your body is in shock.

Like every winter the extreme cold created an earthquake of symptoms. Our tub drain quit working, and now we do a daily dance of hair dryers and boiling water to try and thaw it out. Frost crept up a corner in the pantry. We increased the calories the dogs were eating, and decided to let one of the stay in every night as she has a thinner undercoat. Trips outside we're shortened so had to be planned accordingly. I had to brush off two feet of snow that caked the satellite dish. I broke one of the dogs chain clips because I tapped it against the shovel to try and dislodge some ice inside the mechanism, and so now rope is being used. It is a bit like having an annoying relative stay at your home; you love them, you tolerate the stay, but you know it will only last for a little while.

Our only unfixed female dog gave birth to two tiny pups during the coldest part of this winter. We bred her with our husky and we knew that she was going to whelp, but her tummy was pretty small so we figured she had a few more weeks to go. I checked on her daily and one chilly afternoon I could not get her to come out of her house to change her bed straw. Tiny little mews were tucked against her tummy. So now she and her pups are in the house with us. Momma dog has a annoying habit of taking treats and leftovers and 'burying' them around the house wherever she can find a nook or cranny. Everyday I pay a gross version of an Easter egg hunt and look for her stashes. It works to beat cabin fever.

That and satellite tv.

I have kept myself busy with chores and with planning a vegetable garden this summer. I get excited just thinking about it, it's the same feeling that I got when I was elementary school and we sprouted beans in damp paper towels.

On another note, I am looking for other bloggers who would like to sample my natural products and write a review about them on their blog. I have done this a couple of times and it was always amazing! So if you know someone or you write a blog and would like to write a review let me know! You can email directly at: nunainua@hotmail.com. If you want to see the products visit my etsy store at: www.salmonberryorigins.etsy.com Stay warm everyone!

A quick drawing I did of a arctic wolf.  It's tiny.  And fitting as winter is the season of the wolf.  visit it at: CLICK HERE

yeck. hospitals.

Fate has a sense of humor it seems.

My husband was planning a long winter camping/hunting trip into the arctic wilderness during my bi-annual shopping trip over the Christmas break.  The night before the trip my husband and his traveling partner somehow started chatting about various collarbone fractures that friends and family had suffered over the years.  Of course this meant that the next morning as he was finishing packing his sled, my husband slipped while carrying a 15 gallon jug of gas and slammed himself collarbone first into a grub box corner.  He broke it into four pieces.

As it looked and felt like a major fracture at the time (though they couldn't tell for sure) the clinic here in Anaktuvuk Pass sent him to Fairbanks where I picked him up and we trotted over to the Native Hospital for a late night visit to determine what would happen next.  We had been told that we were expected.

Anyone who is in the Alaska Native Health system knows that service is spotty and difficult.  It can range from outright insulting and frustrating, to competent and amazing.  It just depends on the waxing and waning of the moon.  As someone who has spent their whole life in the system all I know is that it will ALWAYS be a task.  And tedious.  And will normally take a very, very, very long time.    When I was teaching for the NSB I had the opportunity to enjoy my own health and dental insurance.  It was like a fantasy science fiction world all clean and bright and shiny.  I remember having that service as a wonderful and amazing dream.  *sigh*

In reality we showed up at the Native Hospital at about 5pm and were greeted with a few grunts and puzzled looks.  My husband sat in a chair grappling with the mind numbing pain that ensued from being jostled and bounced around in a tiny plane for an hour and half.  I was informed that it was just a 'common collarbone fracture' (though this person did not even examine my husband) and that we should come back tomorrow morning for x-rays.   I told them that he had only been given ibuprofen for the pain and that it was not helping, and if it was possible to get something a tiny bit stronger for the night that would be great.  This person started sputtering about how my comment will 'red flag' us....etc etc.  There was emphatic arm swinging and grandiose comments and other stuff I wasn't listening to.  I sat there frowning, biting my tongue.  They finally agreed to actually look at his shoulder, and once seeing it gave him something to help with the pain as it was a pretty impressive.  The next morning we arrived early only to have to sit in the waiting area for six hours.  In the end we were told that my husband would have to go to Anchorage for surgery.

I think in blogs people find it easy to use them as a pathway to complain about things, but this experience has left me dumbfounded.  Mostly because once we arrived in Anchorage the experience was such the polar opposite.  Again they knew we were arriving and we were helped and tended to during the whole experience.  Our waits were an hour or less.  The staff was professional and pleasant. The surgery went well and the surgeon and nurses were very kind and efficient.  We stayed for a couple of days and then left, me clutching a thick pile of papers with various instructions on aftercare and my husband sporting a new metal collarbone with 8 screws.

I am adjusting to taking on most of the chores in the household and we are both recovering from that whirlwind travelling and exhaustion marathon. I'm currently fighting a sore throat and head cold, of which I will not discuss it for fear of it actually occurring.  The hardest thing though is watching my husband figure out a way to survive 4 more weeks in a sling, as this is the season he usually does a lot of outdoor stuff like trapping and caribou hunting.

So I apologize for the future spotty blog posts this month!  I hope this finds you and yours all warm and healthy and that you all had a amazing Christmas and New Years!

The 'A' in Q and A....

From Novice Naturalist:  Got any advice for staying focused while working at home?

A: First and foremost you have to find what works for you, and part of that is to put it into practice and see how you feel at the end of the day. Are you stressed? are you relaxed? Here is what works for me...

I am realistic.  I am realistic about my time and my ability to use that time to do something with it.  I have been working at home to supplement my income since I began college, so about 16 years.  I did some work in high school but it wasn't significant enough to take up a good part of my time.  At the end of the day I want to be able to sleep well and not feel burnt out.  So to me this means that there are some projects that I will turn down, like long term (as in more than 6 months to several years) projects, or projects where I would not feel a connection to.  This also means I turn down a lot of opportunities, like serving on boards or consulting jobs and such.  I found through trial and error that even though the job might mean I would travel a piddly four times a year, it took it's toll out on my other projects in brain power and time away from the practice.

I'm realistic in how many hours I can work in one day, and in the whole week.  I know that when my husband is around I get practically nothing done, we are best friends so we chat and catch up together and goof off.  So that leaves me with the hours that he is at work , and a couple of hours in the evening after dinner and before our almost nightly movie or show.  I like to have two 'levels' of work going on, so I can switch between the two to keep me interested.  For instance...as soon I wake up I make coffee and check my emails and orders.  I then fill out the orders.  If there are no orders to fill then I move to the next 'level' of project, usually a illustration project.  I space out the hours I do illustration because though it's important to get in the 'zone' staying there might burn you out.  I make myself get up every hour to do some random housecleaning or to watch 15 minutes of a show on tv or to make a cup of juice or coffee.  This way you can see your project with 'clean' eyes, and you can still get things around the house done.

I love post-its, and lists, mainly because I love to cross things out as DONE!  This helps me sleep better at night and makes me see that I am getting something done, be it a personal project or a commission.  Even making a checklist for the steps in a project is a good idea.

When I work I always have a 'set up ' ritual.  This is a must if you work at home.  This puts your mind into work mode so you are not thinking about anything else.  For me the ritual is environmental.  I have a certain playlist of music I play that is not loud enough to be annoying.  It consists of music that enables my imagination, therefore it has no words, or no words in english so I'm not really paying attention to it.  I always set up a cup of something to drink.  I always dim the lights in the room if I am working on computer illustration, and if it's old school drawing then I arrange the lighting so that my drawing is the center of my lighting universe.  If I'm beading I usually do it in front of the tv (which is weird I know but it works for me!) and my beading ritual is to arrange the beads I will use and the tools I will need in easy range.  Basically you want to have a 'ritual' to mentally prepare you for work mode.  Always do this before you work, and after a while it will become automatic.

When I was younger I paid attention to how I 'felt' about a project, how my own personal excitement about it affected how well it went and how well it turned out.  A lot of people don't really respect their feelings about a project but when it comes to anything artistic, it will matter. As I got older I realized that it doesn't mean I should reject projects that are mundane, it just means that I have to work to identify a little more and find something interesting about it.  For personal projects I keep a journal of my ideas, and i always choose one that excites me.

Hopes this helps!



Questions from Anonymous: I love your Lichen oil.  It smells fantastic.  Do you make it with essential oil from lichen?

Answer: No, in fact it has nothing really 'natural' about it, besides the skin loving base oil I dilute it with.  When I began looking at making fragrance oils I had to decide wether or not to use synthetic skin safe scents (chemicals that are neutral that synthesize a specific smell) or essential oils and resins (oils that are distilled from actual plants.)  I chose to use synthetic oils for a few reasons:

1.  I was raised to see anything relating to plants as medicinal.  That our interaction with them is medicinal in nature.  A plant contains a massive amount of chemicals that react with human systems (not just the smell) , and this to me is very important and should never be ignored.

2.  Because all plants are medicinal, some people will react badly to them.  By using synthetics skin safe oils I reduce the amount of people that will react badly to them.

3.  There are more synthetic smells than natural smells.  Sounds weird but true. For instance I use a 'smoke' smell for my noon fire scent and a 'carnation' smell for my Wolf scent that are simply not found in nature.  So this gives me more of an opportunity to get it just right!  Lichen alone contains 11 scents to produce the one single smell that changes into several notes.  Something almost impossible to do with just the one essential oil from lichen.

4.  My scents are unique and specific to my experience,  the smell of lichen is incredibly unique, sniffing a wolf pelt is incredibly unique, and I needed the complexity that synth oils would give me so that other people could experience these things consistently and not differ from batch to batch.  Did you know that one of the notes in my Lichen scent is actually 'dirt'? I would not know how to even distill that scent! lol



Hope these answers helped!  I am looking forward to future Q and A sessions!

The Q in Q and A?.....

A blog to me is sometimes way too one sided.  I am after all a very small percentage of this blog.  The rest is made up of incredibly kind people that are willing to sometimes read my rambles.  So I thought I would start doing a 'Q and A' thing.  Post your Question as comments to this post and I will do my best to answer them in the next post!  It can be about anything!

Fighting the Funk....

Every winter I fall into a cold temperature Funk.  Part of the reason is that the sun really doesn't come up, it just kind of lazily casts a hour or two of dim light, but the main reason is that I am complete wuss when it comes to cold and I refuse to come out till Spring.  I am a wuss compared to most Inupiaq that is....i can't handle anything below -10 comfortably. So I sit in my toasty little house and scowl at my happy husband as he rejoices in the opportunity to trap and to drive his snow machine.  

This winter I am making a real effort to 'fight the funk'.  I have realized that as I get older it is harder to lose weight, to keep muscle and to exercise your brain.  And my usual hibernation just adds pounds and laziness to the equation, which I then have to battle through when I emerge again in the spring.  I refuse to give up my baking so I started to add some other things to my daily routine.  

I bought a exercise video, complete with way-too-energetic people and plan to either use it or get out and walk around at least three times a week.  Today was the first time I have tried the video and I have come to the conclusion of a few things.  One: no matter how much you love someone, if they sit and stare at you while you are gyrating and swinging your arms with no dignity, you will get mad at them and get embarrassed and order them to leave.  So next time I will make sure the husband is hunting or working. Two: you can actually generate enough heat to heat exercising indoors to keep the house toasty, so much so that you will have to open the windows, and Three: it does make you feel happier, and healthier. 

Another thing I realized is I noticed I stopped taking pictures.  And if anyone knows me they will always comment how I ALWAYS have a camera on me, and I will take any opportunity to take photos.  But it sort of ends with winter arriving and the arrival of the 'funk.'  So I forced myself to take a few pictures.  I found out why I hate taking pictures in the winter...the cold and dark dark dark winter.  I realized that I had not done long exposure photos since I was in college.  And that I was actually pretty happy to play around in that area, a few minutes at a time, luckily today was actually warm, despite the heavy snow. 

Our back yard, snow covered and soft.

playing with exposure taking photos of our christmas lights.  I jiggled it a bit but it made it look like neon birds taking flight.

I got too cold when I was hanging these lights on our stairs so they ended up being kind of a jumbled mess of holiday happy.