A toe is at stake: Listen to your intuition

We just got back from a long camping trip in Big Sur. This was the big campout we've been planning for 6 months: group site at our favorite campground, lots of friends and family. I bought myself a new surf kayak a few months ago and planned to take it for another spin after a great trial run in July. I couldn't wait to get back on the water.

Everything was groovy. We started to haul all the gear down to the beach but little things started to go awry. We had the kayak but not the life jacket. Then we had the kayak and life jacket but not the paddle. Yadayadayada. Up and down the hill I went, 5 times in total, to fetch the necessities. The hill was monstrous.



On the 5th trip, I finally had everything. I was frustrated and grumpy and had a sneaky feeling maybe I wasn't meant to surf that day. I thought, "The gods hate me today, but maybe because I've gone through all this trouble they'll reward me with a great day on the water."

I jump right in and had a great first ride. I start thinking my intuition was crap. As I come barreling toward the beach on that first ride I do what I usually do: fall out of the kayak like a dork. Immediately there's a sharp ping on my foot. What is that? No matter. I'm psyched, and there's no stopping me. I climb back in kayak, turn it around, and start paddling out for the next wave. Then my senses come back to me. "hmmm, I better check that."


I looked down and saw a chunk of my middle left toe is hanging there, mostly disconnected. It was so surreal because it didn't hurt and wasn't even bleeding much. The cold water numbed everything. I reached down and manipulate the flesh, and confirmed that a chunk of my toe was indeed sheared off, but holding on. The culprit? My fancy schmancy carbon fiber Werner paddle. Who knew the stupid thing was so sharp?

Hobbling back to the beach, trying my best to keep sand out of the wound, we bandaged it up and worked our way back up the hill. The nearest emergency room was 75 miles away. The ER doc SAVAGELY cleaned out the wound and superglued the thing shut. I asked him to wrap it up well because I still had a week of camping ahead of me. This was day 1 of our trip.





One week post-kayak accident the toe looks uglier than ever... my hubby says, "Don't worry, it's part of the healing process. The outer tissues are dying because it's been severed." Nice.

Moral of the story: Listen to your intuition.

My Sanctuary

This is a picture of my garden. My sanctuary. It's in the Allendale neighborhood of Oakland. In 2004, when we moved in, this was an expanse of green, green grass. Anthony, the previous owner, loved his lawn. I'm sure he watered and fertilized and mowed meticulously. As soon as we moved in we began to rototill and mulch and dig and pretty much kill all the grass, meticulously.

Slowly we've transformed this space from a monoculture of grass into a small urban farm and hangout spot. We built a chicken coop (you can see it in the upper left corner of the photo) and a chicken run along the back for our hens. Back when we rented in the Tesmescal neighborhood, our landlord was kind enough to let us keep a couple chickens in a chicken tractor. When we bought a house, the chickens got a house, too! We also put in a vegetable garden and fenced it off from our rambunctious dog. We planted trees: plum, cherry, lemon, lime, orange, pineapple guava. A couple summers ago we even laid down a small path/patio with natural slate stone.

It was a lot of work, but it was all worth it. There were some in-between years where out backyard was no sanctuary, but rather a battle zone of weeds, compost, and chicken poop. But 5 years later, here we are. If Anthony could see it now.


My favorite garden hang out to sit and watch the chicken channel...




What's the chicken channel? Looks a little something like this.

A mid-battle picture of the garden from 3 years ago. As you can see, we hadn't killed off all the grass... yet.