Ground Rules for Living

1. Keep Your Word

Whenever you don't keep your word,you lessen your experience of yourself and you put something into your environment that always comes back. It maybe as serious as someone loosing trust in you. There is always a consequence. When you are crisp with your integrity, life is crisp. Keep your word, it does matter.

2. Avoid Nothing

What you avoid in life is never the circumstances. It is an internal experience that gets reactivated by circumstances . By resisting and avoiding that experience you create a nerve. The internal experience that you avoid then becomes stronger. As you allow yourself to experience it, it goes away and the nerve diappears. When you avoid something, the nerve gets stronger and your environment becomes threatening. If there is something you are avoiding, handle it quickly and get it behind you.

3. Remove All Unworkability

Unworkability exists only because we tolerate it. If there is unworkability in your life, handle it now. Do whatever it takes to remove it. You may have created such a mess that it will take a lot to handle it. Don't wait. Have everything in your life work. Don't tolerate unworkability.

4. Keep Your Enviornment Clean And In Working Order

When your environment is sloppy and cluttered, so is your vision and clairity. A sloppy environment will hold you back. Clean your home, your work and your car. Fix or get rid of everything that doesn't work. Handle anything that you have a charge on, even if it seems insignificant. Get rid of what you don't use or don't need.

5. Be Positive. Do Not Speak Or Think Negatively Of Yourself, Of Others, Or Of Life.

Every word you speak and every thought you accept creates your reality of life. You act consistent with it and it becomes true. Your creat your circumstances by the words you speak and the thoughts you accept. Don't speak or think negatively unless that's the way you want it to be.

6. Acknowledge That You Are 100% The Cause Of Everything That Happens In Your Life.

The more you see yourself as the cause of what happens in your life, the more you can determine what happens. Others may also be responsible , but when you point the finger at them, you give away all your power. You the become stuck and at their mercy. Pointing the finger at you allows you to take charge of your life.

7. Allow Everything. Let Go Of All Unwillingness.

You are either allowing or resisting. When you allow and are willing for life to be as it is, you are in The Flow. You become clear and effective. When you resist and demand, you are in trouble. Both your aliveness and your effectiveness disappear. Give yourself permission for life to be as it is. Then go do what you need to do, coming from allowing rather than resisting.

8. Let Go Of All Your Attachments.

Anything you can't let go of hurts you. You can be attached to any thing: a person, a thing, a circumstance or a way of being. When you are threatened by the loss of what you are attached to, you go crazy. Attachments are like anchors. They keep you firmly in place. You can't move forward. You have to stay to hang on. Let go of all your attachments. Release whatever you're hanging on to and give it permission to go. If it stays you really have it. If it doesn't, you didn't have it anyway. When there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to stop you.

9. Let Go Of All Upsets.

An upset is a signal that there is something you are not allowing. Find out what it is and release it and the upset will disappear. Your aliveness will return. Life is always the way it is. Hanging on to upsets can only get in your way.

10. Release All Resentments

We resent so we can avoid something. When you avoid confronting your responsibility you suffer. You die inside. To release a resentment you need to forgive. Look for your responsibility and acknowledge it. Totally forgive others, your self and life. You wiill never be free until all resentments are gone.

11. Have Every Relationship Work.

Whenever a realtionship doesn't work, you pay a big price inside. The more important the relationship, the bigger the price. To have a relationship work, forgive them for everything and give them full permission to be the way they are. Love them, empower them and take sole responsibility for the success of the relationship. Make sure every realtionship you have, either past or present, is a full expression of love.

12. Clean Up Whatever You've Done That Is Against Your Integrity.

Clean up all the skeletons in your closet. Acknowledge all your misdeeds. Communicate everything so that you are hiding nothing. Set yourself free from the past. Be willing for anyone to know everything. The withholding destroys your aliveness and has you live your life in fear. It forces you to hold back.

13. Participate Fully In Life. Don't Withdraw.

At any moment you are either participating in life or withdrawing. You are either at cause or at effect. When you withdraw, you stop creating and start reacting. Life then goes downhill fast. To have life work, you have to be in life. The cost of withdrawing can be severe suffering. Stay in charge of your life and live it fully.

14. Have Your Life e About More Than You. Serve!

When you put the focus on you, problems and upsets grow. When you put the focus on sevring others, who you are comes forth. Find something more important than you and throw yourself into it. Find your heart and live it. Have your life be about contributing and giving. Find how to serve.

To Dodge, or not to Dodge

That is the question.

Every day you make decisions. What to wear. What to eat. Some decisions are more important. What kind of car to buy? Do you even need a car now?

Ten months and 2 postings ago I wrote a blog about roadie vehicles. The vehicle of choice for most roadies for many years was the Ford Econoline. Awesome, tough, reliable. It can carry all your stuff AND you can sleep in it. I’m talking, of course, about the life style of the young and restless. Those of us nomads that travel from renaissance festival to renaissance festival (or gig to gig for you musicians). We were young. It was fun and an adventure to be on the road. We would fix a small bed, a few shelves, perhaps some curtains. Called it home. Some vans had little A/C units stuck in the back window. Many had big dogs taking up the whole passenger seat.

We grew older. We were still on the road. The comforts of life started looking better and better. We’d get a 12 foot bumper pull trailer to pull behind our van, giving us more room to haul our stuff. Years passed. The bumper pull was traded for a gooseneck or fifth wheel, and the loyal, now ragged looking Ford was retired with much love and fanfare and replaced with a Dodge Ram 3500. It was the influence of the 1990’s and we felt we were all moving up in the world. And, we didn’t attract as much attention from the DOT.

The Dodges (and Ford Power Strokes) and the nice sanitary looking travel trailers represented to us a sort of moving up in the world. As if we were attaining the dream of our parents by finally getting that house in the “good” neighborhood. But we missed our vans. Our vans, with so much of who we were written all through them. It was like letting go of our childhood pets that had shared so many memories with us.

But there are still those of us who like to be creative in our travels. Larry and I bought a 42 foot dragster hauler trailer and have stripped it out and we are rebuilding it into our on the road home. Then, because it was a tad too much for our Dodge Ram 2500, we made the difficult decision to sell the Dodge and go bigger. We bought a International 4700 series crew cab. Larry finally has his own big truck again!

Ok, well, it isn’t a BIG truck. More like a Class 5. But it was bigger than even those F-450’s, but under CDL weight. This turn out is going to be cool!

Reality sets in. Time for ANOTHER major decision. After selling the Dodge, we were left without a run-about vehicle. My sister loaned us an old Ford F150 for the summer. At the end of last year, we found a great deal on one of the online auctions and acquired a beautiful 2002 Ford E350. It was clean. It runs great. Truly, the best van I’ve ever had.

Gas hog.

It’s a fact. Trucks get better gas mileage than vans. Especially the diesels. So, here we are, thinking of changing vehicles again. Here is the question. Do we sell the Ford van and the International and get a Dodge RAM3500? This is a tough one. Last August it cost us about $440 in just fuel for the International and the Ford F150 truck to go from Colorado to Texas in our bi-annual migration. A distance of barey 1000 miles. I remember when it cost us around $50-60 to make that trip. But the price of fuel is hurting everywhere.

Cons for having only one vehicle:

• We will still have to try to fit everything into the trailer and truck. We want to take our small 12 flatbed trailer with us so we can have something to haul the ponies on short trips, and we would pull that with the van while the International pulls the big tailer/i.e. house. Also, we were thinking it would make things easier if we carried all Crystal Mountain business stuff in the Ford, thereby avoiding any potential problems from the DOT if they ever caught us hauling business stuff in the International or the trailer it pulled. THAT immediately makes you commercial.

Pros for selling the van and the International and having just one truck:

• One vehicle means repairs on only one vehicle. It also means lower insurance for just one vehicle.


• Larry and I and the dog get to ride together every trip. No need to be constantly calling each other on the phone, or talking on the CB, or having to keep up with each other.


• A Dodge RAM3500 will pull the big-ass trailer just as easily as the International will (turns out the International only has DT360 instead of the DT466 they told us it had. The International has a Allison automatic, so it only gets about 10mpg anyway, and it would cost money to put in a manual tranny to get better fuel mileage. Our old Dodge 2500 had a manual tranny, but because it didn’t have the dually rear-end it didn’t pull the trailer well enough.)


• Pulling the trailer with just a Dodge 3500 will no longer attract attention from the DOT’s. They love to harass truck drivers, and if you aren’t clean it can be a HUGE pain. Larry and I have taken absolutely EVERY precaution about being legal with this International and the Smokey Bears still want to pull Larry over and tell him he isn’t legal.


• We can get better fuel mileage with a Dodge 3500 even pulling the trailer. Empty we can probably get 8-20 mpg and loaded probably at least 12-13 mpg. Both the Ford E350 and the International get only about 10-12 mpg empty.


• I have heard the dually’s are a stiffer ride, but the two Dodge 2500s we had road like a Cadillac……and Larry might be able to enjoy A/C again.

So, should we sell the Ford and International and buy another Dodge?

You can post your comments at www.facebook.com/crystalmountainoilsandincense

Musings of a micro-business person

Being in business can be pretty scary sometimes. These last few years have been nerve-wracking. It only seems to get worse.

Now, I don’t like being a complainer, and I won’t do it here, but my thoughts have been wandering towards becoming a “real” business. Larry and I have run a Mom/Pop craft business – rather successfully, I might add – for nearly 20 years now. Pretty amazing for two people who have no formal training in business management. When I was in high school, I really had no idea what the CVAE, DECA, KEY or even CAE clubs were all about. I truly had no inspiration as a teenager, no one to tell me how to achieve.

I learned all about achieving from Larry, my second husband. Now, of course, I have ambition out the whazoo, but I still lack a lot of skills on how to make all that happen. What I can see, however, are vague images of things that I know I need to know. I just can’t quite decipher them clearly. I see other rennies doing business, and I watch how they balance and juggle the craft/artist, accountant, marketing, sales, janitor, web mastering, shipping/receiving, research/development matrix. I sometimes wonder if they are just as confused as I am, or did they figure out some secret? Do they actually have any schooling in business? My sister and her husband formed a small business of their own and they seem to be doing very well, thank you. Is it really because they ‘played’ the game and paid all the licenses and permits, filed all the incorporation papers, set up all the payroll, applied for the business line of credit? All I knew how to do is make something, go set it out and hope someone will buy it. And buy it they did! It was the 1990’s and people just bought and bought and bought!

Eventually, it came to a severe adjustment. George Bush was in the White House and the Dot Com market had made it’s crash, balancing out the mad credit lending. While it was enjoyable while it lasted, I think the credit economy is trying to adjust back to pre-1970’s where people with good credit had credit and people with bad credit didn’t have credit and had to live on a cash basis, and not this blue sky concept that everyone is entitled to everything. One must work for what one wants.

Take Crystal Mountain. We have ALWAYS lived on a cash basis. It doesn’t have anything to do with our credit history (well, ok, we’ve incurred some medical debts), I just get scared about the ability to pay on a credit card. Larry and I are always saying that one should take calculated risks, otherwise you won’t ever leave the train station of dreams, but I am wondering if not sticking my neck out to pay debt has hampered Crystal Mountains ability to expand. Now I’m thinking that was a stupid question. Fiscal conservative is suppose to the be the model, right?

So all this rambling – I didn’t score well in my high school English composition classes either – is that I am beginning to see the value of getting educated in business management. True, I’ve learned a LOT in 20 years, but I keep thinking there is more to learn. There are lots of books out there, but even those can skip topics. I’ve learned a lot on how to manage people – still working on that too. I’ve learned about keeping records and filing taxes. What I am starting to learn about now is business plans, executive summaries, and a host of financial, number crunching, type reports that I haven’t got the foggiest idea on where to start. Year-to-Date Profit and Loss, current Balance sheet – I mean, Crystal Mountain is so small! I am at a loss on how to find those numbers. Our inventory isn’t on paper – it’s the “look on the shelf and order” method.

I wonder if it is worth taking out a micro loan just to pay some accountant to get my papers in order so I can apply for a small business loan? A loan for a loan. It sounds silly, some might say it is a plan. Naw, I think I’m conservative enough to just keep on doing business the way we have for 20 years. Anyway, I have a big faire coming up in 4 weeks and I gotta go make pretty, smelly things.

Why I need my Cummins

This is why I need my Cummins.

My business simply demands a lot of travel. Back in the ‘old day’ it was a lot easier – and a lot cheaper – when fuel was only about a dollar a gallon. It was easier and profitable to travel all over the country to shows, and know that I could still come out with some money in my pocket. Now that fuel is more than three times the cost, it takes about $150 to get from Toon Town to Colorado, instead of the old $40-$50.

Vehicles have changed also. Back when I first started working at Ren Faires, and just before I started traveling full time, the vehicle of choice was the Ford Econoline F150. EVERY rennie had one it seemed. James and I bought one after our first summer on the road, and I think he eventually got around 300k miles on it. Larry and I have been through at least 3 Ford vans over the years. That 351 V8 just seems to have been the best ever engine for hauling your stuff around. And rennies have stuff. Lots of stuff.

I’ve seen people take a 20 foot, 20 year old travel trailer and load every square inch of the floor, bed, tables and privy with their clothes, costumes, books, stock, tents, you name it. And then they wonder why the springs break. And the van that they try to pull it with is just as loaded, although, somewhere, there is a nook they crawl into for sleeping on the road. Good as that Econoline was, it didn’t have enough oomph to pull some of those trailers.

These days the Econoline is a retired icon. Now I see more Dodge Cummins diesel at faires than any other vehicle. Maybe it’s just the newer technology, or who knows, but rennies have discovered the power of diesel. Power strokes follow a close second. Everyone has their favorites, but I am sold on Cummins. Larry is a former truck driver, with more than 2 million logged commercial miles. That takes an average of 20 years to accumulate, and that’s only his logged miles *wink*. Trucks is what Larry knows. He is a Cummins fan. And after we got our first Dodge back in 1998, I’ve been a fan every since. We sold our second Dodge last April so we could buy this...






We had bought the trailer last August. We sold the Dodge in order to buy the International, needing something that could haul that big ass trailer. And we acquired the Ford 150 above for a runabout. I MISS my Cummins! It was so weird to drive a gas engine again. There is nothing else like driving a Cummins and once you’ve driven one, you’ll never want to drive anything else again. Granted, this little Ford has proven to be a really good workhorse – it has more than 300k miles on it and it’s still going strong. But we simply need more. The picture above the bed is totally loaded, with more stuff in the rear of the cab, so hauling a 4 horse trailer with two ponies in it is stretching the limits.

The good news is that the International that we bought will be fairly inexpensive to switch engines in it. It came with a DT360 in it, which doesn’t have much more power in it than our 5.9 liter Dodge Cummins did. But on big trucks all parts are interchangeable. You can take a Peterbilt or a Kenworth, drop in any tranny you want in either, or a Detroit or Cummins – they all fit. So Larry is going to find an older Cummins with a half a million miles on it and put it in. We’ll never be able to overload now!

More CRF

It is difficult for me to not keep saying "wow" when I'm in Colorado. The rainbows here are particularly great. We got this double rainbow the other day when we were leaving the showers on site.



I got this shot of Erika working in the booth on the second weekend. Doing her usual good work.



Sadly, Erika had to go back home after the second weekend and Friday morning July 9 her mother passed away. Erika was able to spend her last moments with her. Our condolences go out to Erika and wish her the best.

Don't like the weather? Just wait a second.....

Colorado is a wonderful place. It can also be a harsh place. Larry and I don't do the extreme sports like a week of wilderness camping in the winter, or rock climbing. In fact, we don't even hike much anymore, but we have done some awesome exploring over the years. But if you spend any time in Colorado at all, you will experience its intenseness.

Opening weekend at Colorado Renaissance Festival was one of those trying weekends. It was SO un-Colorado like for the weater to be has cold, rainy and harsh for so long as it was. It wasn't the best impression Erika had of the state that I've so long praised. But we got through it without incedent and had a couple of good weekends weather-wise and crowd-wise.

This weekend - weekend number four - was typical of Colorado. Warm and dry, actually almost balmy in the mornings. And right on schedule - about 3 o'clock in the afternoon - along came the 20% chance of rain. The rain on this day, as is common, turned into hail. First, the normal pea sized hail. After about 15 minutes it stopped.

But the clouds didn't go away as they usually do. Withing 20 minutes it started again. Marble size hail. The hail abated. Then more. Eventually, after about 60 minutes of on again off again hail, the hail got bigger each time, until it was golf ball size!

With the onslaught of the first hail, people ran for the booths. Oh yes, we like that! "Come on in!"



They crowded in and browsed. One young lady was sniffing the oils and the hail was bouncing off the trees and off of the ground and hitting her in the legs! That's cold!

Of course, as is always in Colorado on the front range, the clouds move out onto the plains and the sun returns. People swarm out of the booths the same way they swarmed in. Merriment abounds!

Erika's Colorado Adventure

After settling in behind the booth at the Colorado Renaissance, I found my accommations extremely modern. Especially with some of the other faires, its either a tent or a hotel room. Havin an efficient apartment right behind where I work is the ULTIMATE. My drive from Alabama to Larkspur, Colorado was long but very beautiful! My co-pilot Tasha was enjoying the ride herself. She is such a great travelin companion. Makings of a good rennie dog...lol

Life is definitely interesting on the road. Im used to that everyday hustle of the corporate world. The job that is always in the same place...how boring! My first week in Colorado was one for the books in my travels. Colorado Renaissance started off on a harsh note. It was so cold and wet and instead of bringing a heater on the road I brought a fan instead. Must remember to prepare for anything on the road. Thank god I wasnt in a tent!

Last week, Larry and Kerry took me on a quided tour of absolutely beautiful scenery and a drive up to their property up in Whitehorn. It was a WOW kind of day. With the cold weather we had that weekend, the mountain tops were covered in snow. As soon as I figure out my digital camera I will post some pictures.

Its an absolutely beautiful day here today, so Im taking Kerry's advice and Im taking the day off to go on a walkabout with Tasha. Need to remember to buy batteries for the camera.