well folks,

all good things must end and loverzan's time has come to fade away, like a good magical queendom, into history and the archives of...

My brand new bouncing baby blog, Breaking Sod!

So long, sweet Loverzan, three years of love, loss, joy, grief, art, humor and gardening have I spent in thy wondrous realm and I shall miss the gleaming towers, the unicorn, dragon and mighty goddess guardian.

Goodbye too, with much love and many thanks to my generous host and erstwhile fiance, Daniel Talsky, who created this beautiful place for me to express myself and has hosted and administered and geekwizarded for me all these years, despite much frusticating angst. You will always be family.

And of course, to my dear readers, one and all:

Thank you so very much for sharing my stories and inspirations and silliness. It's been loverly.

Come help me break the sod and grow a whole new world-don't be afraid to dig in-the love is still there.

:)

Love y'all,
Loverzan

OK, this cold izzen fuddy anymore-somebody make it stop before I sneeze my headache inside out!

At least I got to stay home(couldn't very well give massage with my nose running like a leaky faucet) and devote the day to garlicking myself and working on my new blog.

The header's starting to look good. Man, I suck at the mathematical parts of this stuff. But I just need to add one thing and then, keep your fingers crossed as I attempt to whack it into place!

:)

Oh my head... I think I'll go eat some soup now.

God is change.
And in the end,
God prevails.
But meanwhile...
Kindness eases Change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
the most intense
Of our chosen struggles.

Octavia Butler, 'Parable of Talents'

plashes wetly as the cars zoom blurrily by the lounge window here at work. People hustle past, hidden under bobbing umbrellas or bundled jackets. It's cold and I have a cold. Not a big ugly kind of cold, just a bit of a sniffle.

It doesn't stand a chance against my garlic.

I'm glad it's raining, raining on the streets, the people, the buildings, trees and most of all because it's raining on my new-dug garden, with it's dry little cloves freshly buried, soaking up the perfect chill wetness... So, right now, I love the rain. It matches my mood-kind of drippy, a bit sad, missing my currently scattered friends, but happy because I got my garlic planted.

Garlic is as good as ten mothers.

At least that's what the movie of that name claims. It's a good documentary on the loverly plant, 'specially if you like crazy ol' Italians, lots of mouth-watering meaty goodness and oooooooooooodles of garlic!

The piglets are kind of hard to watch though, as they're transformed right before your eyes from cute little garlic-milk suckling babies into barbaric(mainly because they still look so much like a little pig-a dead, skewered, roasted pig) looking morsels.

Mmmm, mmmm good. I don't think I'll be eating pork again soon.

:)

I think my thumbs are going to fall off!

One of my clients tonight had an injury, developing scar tissue and she asked for 45 minutes of cross fiber friction(a massage technique that pretty much consists of applying tiny, hard, back-and-forth strokes with ones thumbs over and over again)!

I gave her 20, but it was still pretty heavy duty. Po' thumblies.

Then I had one of my regulars, a big dude, come in for his usual hour and a half-man, I thought I was going to die!

Whew. I survived though and was rejuvenated by an awfully sweet compliment. My client told me I'd spoiled him for other massage therapists-I'm the only one he'll see!

I think I blushed.

Not to be outdone by any uppity thumbs, my little toe is positively screaming today... Last night about 1am I heard the mini kiwis calling me from their clear plastic box, with their sweetest, tiny, seductive, juicey, sweet, tart comeons, so I stumbled(literally) towards the kitchen and WHAM!-slammed right into the boombox sitting unobtrusively against the hall wall. It doesn't LOOK too bad, but it feels about as big and purple as a ripe plum.

Ow. Stupid kiwis.

I'll be glad to go home tonight, even if only to pack for our trip to Victoria tomorrow.

I'm taking Sam up on the Clipper... It's supposed to be a pretty fast boat, perhaps it'll rekindle his interest in things boatish.

Lately it's all about spaceships and transformers.

I got him a set to keep his active little fingers busy while I read to him at night. He loves to hear the stories but if he doesn't have something to occupy those wigglers, the wiggle spreads to his whole body and then explodes all over the bed and I have to roar!

It's simply not conducive to reading.

But the transformers are working wonders.

:)

...I gotta get my ass outta this chair and get to work.

I've got a 12 year old client today, for an hour and a half. It's not very often you see a kid who likes massage that much-or can lie still that long!

:)

One thing I like about my job, ya never know who might come in. It keeps things interesting.

Yipes! Gotta go, gah!-my leg's asleep...

Yup, that must be it.

I just burnt my first pan in the new home!(kaffkaff!-smokechoked house!)

:(

Durn sillygeekyp'aud'arcoteamakin'non-smellin'fuzzbrainedemailin'panforgettin'girl! I guess it was bound to happen. Now that my 'puters on a whole different level from the kitchen... I'm surprised I haven't scorched 'em all! Maybe I'd better get a little hotplate so I can have direct eye contact with my teapans as they boil.

At least it wasn't my new housemate Heather's pan-tho, happily for me, the interesting state of her pans bottoms leads me to believe she's toasted a few in the past herself!

:)

OK, now I'm going upstairs 'til the(new pot of) tea's done.

down the street, it was raining so hard and so long last night.

Did you hear it? Like my friend Sandra(and now to her amused chagrin, her two year old) says: 'It was pissin' down rain last night!'

The torrent was so loud it woke me up, not once, but three or four times!

Amazing how much water the earth can absorb, there's not even any visible puddles out there, much less the rivers, maybe even ducks floating by, that I was expecting.

Ducks. Hmmm... I must be hungry, 'cause now I'm thinking like a carnivore again. It's been a while since I ate me some duck.

I've been in a chicken kind of mood lately. Last night I took myself out for a fine, late, chicken dinner at the Light Gourmet, a new restaurant folks at work have been yakkin' about. So new, in fact, that when the fella runnin' the place saw me reading the menu, he actually came outside, wreathed in smiles, to tell me about their excellent soups. What could I say, I was hungry, so in I went and it was mmmmm... Even if they didn't serve the drumstick.

Today my friend Holly is coming over. She's in need of chicken soup and we're gonna make some art. Right now, chicken soup and art sounds perfect to me, a little slice of heaven.

Speaking of fowl, here's a little ditty that I just composed(if you can call it that) for a friend recovering from vasectomy-reversal surgery:

Ahem...

A special type of chicken.

Lay your newly shaven head in bed,
don't think 'bout the phone,
or the tone,
my special, tattooed chicken,
with golden corn and berries red.
Cause life is good and friends are nice,
even with their balls on ice.

Thank you.

of a mind that's too full of thoughts-taut, dark, wrathful thoughts, gnarled, tangled, strangled, desperate, hopeless, grief-stricken thoughts... When you're feeling brutal, ravaged by the unfairness of it all, aching to bursting with unfulfillable, maddening desire, even the wise thoughts that come flashing through pile up, become blocks, building walls, then towers of judgement, with twisting, turning stairs and battlements.

There's times when you just want to bang your head against the floor with the immense pain, the futility of it, times when you beg for release, for mercy, for justice...

But then, you know.

You have to live through it, with it. Even though it's completely intolerable. There is no one who can step in and save you.

There is only you.

And yes, life IS intolerable.

But you're not going to climb under the covers and die, so you might as well go on and if you're going to go on, then you might as well live as beautifully as you can. And when you find the courage, when you come out of the caverns of your soul, you might find...

Life is also beautiful.

Thank god for music...

I love Michael Franti. I'm so glad I got to see him in concert this year. I had a wonderful time,even though I couldn't find my friends in the press.

It didn't matter really. I gave shoulder rubs to the people around me, and a few of us sat down right in the center of the crowd in front of the stage. We felt like kids, looking at a forest of legs around us, down in the secret world that adults don't even notice.

But pretty soon I was up, leaping up and down with the best of the surging crowd of happy, proud, freaky people at Bumbershoot, listening with all my heart and soul to a man who knows what he's singing/living for.

It was beautiful, he's beautiful. His dreads flying, wild grin, bare feet high in the air with every whooping jump. He had us rocking and leaping and shouting and praying.

Here's to:

Love Invincible

When I fall down, I need a helping hand.
And when I lose my head, it's cause it's always buried in the sand.
When I get stuck on myself, feelin' sorry for myself.
Will you help me grab a hold and please don't patronize my soul.
When I start to lose control, when I get irrational, when I start to get too high,
you see me come floating by, I say

Touch me in the morning sun, when I feel impossible.
Touch me in the morning sun, show me what is possible.
Touch me in the morning sun when I feel impossible, show me what is possible.
Teach me love invisible, Teach me love invincible, Teach me love invincible,
Teach me love invincible.

When you're down, you need a helping hand.
And when you lose your head, I'll help you wash away the sand.
And when you get stuck on yourself, feelin' sorry for yourself.
I will help you grab a hold and I won't patronize your soul.
When you start to lose control, when you get irrational, when you start to get too high,
I see you come floating by, I say
Touch me in the morning sun, when I feel impossible.
Touch me in the morning sun, show me what is possible.
Touch me in the morning sun when I feel impossible,
show me what is possible.
Teach me love invincible, Teach me love invincible.

When we're down, we need a helping hand.
And when we lose our heads, it's cause they're always buried in the sand.
But when we get stuck on our selves, feelin' sorry for our selves.
Will you help us grab a hold and please don't patronize our souls.
When we start to lose control, when we get irrational, when we start to get too high,
You see us come floating by, I say,

Touch us with the morning sun, when we feel impossible.
Touch us with the morning sun, show us what is possible.
Touch us in the morning sun when we feel impossible, show us what is possible.
Teach us love invincible, teach us love invisible

Teach us love invincible, hold us love invicible, share us love invincible,
be us love invincible, help us love invisible, touch us love invincible,
breathe us love invincible, sing it love invisible.