moving time?

As I've written about many many (too many?) times, we are building a
house on our land while we reside in a "house trailer" adjacent to it.
The new house is almost complete now. Isn't that a nice subjective
statement? To me, it was almost complete when we had it completely
dried-in. It was also almost complete when we had all the internals
(plumbing, electric, water) running through the walls. Now we have all
the drywall in with insulation behind it, and today we are getting our
septic tank. Our kitchen cabinets are in. Our toilet is not yet. A few
walls are painted. Only one is trimmed. Flooring has not been started.
Still, I say we are almost complete because to me, the house is
already livable.

When people ask me, "So when are you moving in?" it makes me pause. I
don't have a good answer for that. Perhaps Livvy and I are already
moved in. We have slept here for two nights in a row because the
trailer is unbearably hot. A humid heat wave poured in a couple days
ago. It was then that I realized the true brilliance of my uncle's
design.

The first time we traipsed the hundred feet from our trailer to the
new house through our knee-high grass (since we've had no time to get
to things like cutting grass during this house project), and we broke
a sweat by the time we reached the new front door, we were overjoyed
to open the door and feel a temperature difference so significant it
was as if we were walking into air conditioning. That was just the top
floor.

Once we hit the basement floor, the effect was tenfold. I grinned and
grinned. I am tired of living in a giant toaster oven in the middle of
a field. I slept that night in the cool basement with Livvy while the
rest of family sweated it out (by choice) in the hotbox trailer. I
needed two layers of covers. It was heavenly.

In the morning, I awoke to the sound of birds and looked outside the
window where treetops greeted me. For the first time I can remember in
months, I wanted to get up. I felt fairly well-rested, but it wasn't
the amount or quality of the sleep that beckoned me awake. It was the
trees. It was morning outside - the birds knew it - and the night
cycle was over. The day cycle had begun. I could almost recognize the
enormity of the gift that is God's creation. How perfect the
design. How lucky I am to be able to experience it today.

There were so many decisions with the house that weren't so much
decisions as practical solutions, such as its orientation to northern
light rather than southern light, its walkout basement, specific
contractors that we hired and loved, found only by chance. One day I
might go into those different experiences because I have learned
things during this project that should be shared. I've learned a great
deal about building a house and I have suggestions about avoiding
different financial pitfalls that I think would be helpful to other
owner-builders.

But I've also learned much about cultivating positive energy, as my
husband would say. From the beginning, the house was sacrosanct to me.
No negative input was allowed. It was to be a place only of positive,
supportive, healing energy. The big picture windows were installed
toward the woods so that we could constantly be grounded by life and
the creator behind it.

Most importantly, perhaps, we found the bright side to any of our
struggles with it. In this way, I created my own reality, and it was
one of positive optimism. I think we all create our own realities
based on what input we allow in and what output we send out.

When we hired the guys to put up the wood on the ceiling, for example,
there were several complaints I could have had about them. Instead, we
reframed the experience as a positive one when we realized that we
never would have met Ben, a contractor from our local Amish community,
and thus we never would have had our beautiful handmade cherry
handrails, nor our heirloom corn seeds, nor my lesson in door hanging
and trim, and much more. When I retell the story of the wood
installation - to myself and to others - I can focus the story on the
deadbeat guys who installed it. Or I can focus the story on the way I
met Ben and his crew. Is it an uplifting story or a depressing one?
Does it leave me fearful or hopeful, anxious or settled? It is up to
me, the storyteller, to create it.

The house certainly feels like a sanctuary, just as I'd always hoped.
It gives me a feeling of special responsibility to keep it that way. I
must not be grouchy about the amount of work involved or upset with
the children for not allowing me the time I need to do it. I must try
to keep it especially clean and beautiful to match the beauty we see
out the big windows.

When I come home down our long driveway, I am opting to go to the new
house over the old most of the time now. I want to be in the
sanctuary. I want to be with the birds and the trees, the cool dry air
and the tall open roof. When are we moving in? Maybe there is no firm
answer there. Maybe it is a longer slower process of moving from
negative to positive, from cynicism to hope. Maybe we already are.

the finish line

We are almost there...to the finish line on the house, that is. The bulk of our kitchen cabinets and countertop have now been installed. Our drywall is installed and finished. And our electrician, plumber, and septic installer have put us on their schedule for next available. But most notably, all financing has been secured for the complete finish. What a weight off my shoulders! I can't believe how much better I've been sleeping at night now that I'm not always worried about where the next installment of building funds will come from. Whew!

Last week was a go-go-go week to get ready for our friends to come with their seven children to help us install the kitchen cabinets. The deadline seemed like it was going to be impossible to meet at times, but we did it and the results were well worth it. We also had a fun day playing with our friends, despite the day being a rainy wash-out.

This week, we are taking a vacation from working on the house - we so desperately need it - and we are trying to focus on Easter approaching instead. My dear Great-Aunt Mary Violet told me I was working too hard and needed to have some fun. I was thinking the exact same thing myself when she gave me her thoughts, so I decided to take her advice this week and just play around with the kids and the garden and try to recuperate. It's been relaxing and revigorating. Yesterday I felt I'd had the perfect day, bumming around the garden and the yard with the children, doing whatever struck my fancy at the time with no real agenda for the day. I can't remember the last day I gave that to myself, but I've decided I need to take it a little more often.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been trying some new methods with our garden. Here's some pics of the different covers and simple cold frame setups.

I'm also covering our whole kitchen garden with black landscaping cloth - thanks to my dad, the black cloth provider :-) - to try to be proactive about the weeds.

Then, we are trying like mad to build up our land for better growing. Last year, after watching our tomatoes out front piddle and putz around, barely able to fight off bugs and disease, we decided to test our soil. It flunked. It tested poor to very poor on every single nutrient one would expect to find in healthy soil. If that's not a telling assessment of what agribusiness is doing to our once fertile lands I don't know what is. So this year, we're not planting much of anything out there. Instead, we're ordering a bunch of composters. Our first composters arrived in the mail Monday. Fifteen baby white turkeys.

The plan is to cover the land with turkeys, chickens, pheasants & guineas to fertilize for us over the summer. In the fall, they will all be processed. It's a win-win-win-win.We get compost delivered on-site. We get to fill our freezers with poultry protein. We don't have to support any more animals over the winter. And, perhaps best of all, they might make a serious dent in our ongoing grasshopper plague.

For the poultry themselves, they get to free-range as they were designed to do. I suppose it's a win for them too. In the world of day-old hatchery chicks, they've won the lottery for happy living conditions.

Last night there were tornadoes in our county so I woke the girls up at nearly midnight and we all trekked out to the new house. My big girl found it very exciting. This morning she exclaimed, "Last night was so fun!"

I agree. Our first night in our home couldn't have been more cozy, more warm, more comforting, more safe, more just plain wonderful. I'm considering painting and trimming out the bedroom first thing so I can spend every night there. It's hard to believe we will be there permanently in one more short month. Wow.

'til my next quiet moment...

onions and peas

I grabbed a few quick minutes over the past couple weeks (okay, really
I had to grab a few hours to do the job well) and I planted some peas
and onions for us. I was already feeling behind on my spring planting
since we've had such unseasonably warm March weather so far. Then a
cold spell hit over the weekend reminding me that it really is just
March. I now feel perfectly caught up. Yay!

This year, I'm experimenting with some new methods for part of my
spring planting. Last autumn, I covered a small portion of one of our
big front gardens in black plastic to kill off weeds and ended up
leaving it there over the winter. It was contractor grade black
plastic - big, thick heavy stuff. Last weekend, I went out and cut
slits in the black plastic and planted my peas directly into the
slits. I used some twisty ties to keep the slits open so the seeds
could find sunlight after they germinate. Then, I can take off the
ties and hopefully the black plastic will continue to keep down the
weeds for me around my peas.

I also built some various cold frames in the front. Three of them are
simply old wood windows laid over cedar logs as supports. I direct
seeded broccoli and spinach into the soil inside the cedar log
"frame." Then I've been putting my seedlings under two more cold
frames. For those, I took the frame to an old papasan chair and draped
some heavy row cover fabric on top. The fabric lets in light and water
and helps hold in heat. I covered our strawberry patch in this same
fabric.

Another method I'm experimenting with is to simply turn clear plastic
containers upside down to create a little hot box for my seedlings and
plants. This is especially useful as it seems to hold in moisture
really well, although I imagine that the temperature could get pretty
high in there if I'm not careful and leave them out on a sunny 60
degree day. It could probably get high enough to kill my plants.

I love seeing the little sprouts coming up! We are craving
fresh vegetables around here like nobody's business. Seeing our little
baby plants is making me excited and impatient!

goodbye january!

As I type this, my Macbook Time and Date tells me it is January 31st, 2011.

I remember January of last year as my own private purgatory. I was waiting on a new baby, a new house, a new schedule, happiness, life to resume I guess. I felt the four walls of the temporary transitional home trailer close their icy cold non-insulated grip around my neck while I pined out the window at the oppressive grey skies. Grey. Grey after day after grey after day.

I wish I could say it was much less dramatic than that, but if anything, it was more so. I remember sobbing through multiple showers, trying to wash away the sadness, telling myself to put the feelings I had back in the box in my head where they belonged. Pregnancy gets harder on my emotions every time and last winter was by far the worst.

This winter is better. It's still cold. Still grey. Still winter. I remind myself to fight the sadness by staying busy. I recognize that January seems to have had no beginning and no end; yet, I stop myself from writing about that in my head. (As I am always writing, I'm just not always publishing.) I choose not to go down that rabbit hole and focus on the new house construction instead. I tell myself to push through the work on the house before it's warm so I can turn to the garden in the Spring without guilt.

And so this day has arrived: January 31st. See? January really is going to end.

The busy-ness is starting to pay off. The house is nearing completion. We have all the rough systems work done except electric. We should be able to start on the finish work by the week after next.

It's a good thing our kids are adorable and engaging and cuddly and hilarious (what, me? Biased?), because having two babies at home could have been frustrating when they made it next to impossible to do much of the work ourselves.

Jeff has been able to do some of the exterior siding and he plans to put insulation on the ceiling this week. He chose our bathtub and shower surround for us and shuttled it safely home after making three return trips to Lowe's on the same item because of various defects. (Poor guy.) The one we ended up with is perfect.



I have done what I do best - manage the project. I've been the main point of contact between all of our different contractors. For those who know me, it will come as no big surprise to say that I've thoroughly enjoyed this work. I'm a big picture kind of gal. Working on detailed minutiae day in and day out would be a recipe for insanity for me. But give me a project to manage - a budget to meet, communication to direct between team members, problems to solve and logistics to figure - and then give me the unilateral power to make decisions spontaneously and under deadlines and pressure and there you have it. I'm like a fish to water.

Or like a goat to a crabapple tree. Penny finally took down our crabapple tree. It was one of the first trees we planted when we moved here and she insisted that of all the trees on our 15 acres of property, this one crabapple was the only one she desired. We would clap our hands at her when she began to nibble it and for awhile, this would scare her back to her barn. Then she decided we were all talk, I guess, because we had to up the ante to snowballs and water guns. I think this all just made the crabapple more appealing. It was now the forbidden fruit.

I think we all were a little happier when we decided, well, it's just a crabapple. Let her have it. It was down in a week's time and the stress of worrying over it went away with it.

She is expecting a baby (or two?) in April and I can try my hand at milking again.



Meanwhile, we have little Vincent. Vincent Van Goat. He is a little one-month-old Nubian who we helped escape useless slaughter for being the wrong gender. He's currently leasing a cage in our back bathroom from us for the low, low price of crying for bottles and nuzzling our chins and being an all around likable little guy.

In a totally impulsive decision, we gave up internet at home in November. In hindsight, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to give it up in the Spring, when we could replace it with more outside productive activities. But I do know that we've saved so much money by no longer having internet at home. The actual cost of the high-speed internet in the house was negligible compared to the amount of money we spent in online shopping (either through Amazon or eBay or craigslist) and the amount of time we spent in useless pursuit of online deals and entertainment. Although the weather has been challenging to our productivity, we have still accomplished far more than we would have if we still had internet at home.

But it has certainly changed my online social connections. I no longer venture out to Facebook at all. I'm lucky to even answer my emails, quite honestly. I blog still, whenever I get a chance, but the chances come more rarely. When I get comments, I'm overjoyed, and I wish I could answer them personally, but that whole no-internet thing makes it pretty hard. I do read them! I do love them! And I write responses to them in my head, as I am always writing, whether or not I am publishing. :-)

As I sit here waiting on the propane company to set up a new propane tank for us, I am looking at blue skies surrounding us today. Our chickens and guineas are pecking at the ground. Later, the ladies will head back to the coop and lay eggs for us. We finally have enough daylight for them to lay regularly again.

I see our big fat dairy goat eating up the tall hay from last year. I love the new relationship we've developed. I love watching her trust increase each time I feed her on the milk stand while I lift her legs, touch her belly, and brush her coat.

I see our house with all the walls framed and weather protected and the front siding on and I know we're on the home stretch now. The walls of this trailer are losing their grip.

I see our babies growing. They are chunky and smiley and healthy. Our big girl is reading on her own. She snuggles under blankets with a good book and sounds it out with a proud smile on her face when she gets to the last page.

We have much to be thankful for - that never escapes me. I think it's hard to begrudge a life where your family is all well and present if you've ever lived a status quo of loss.

But today, I am most thankful for one thing: it is finally - finally - the very last day of January.

snapshots

I have a friend who takes these amazing portraits.



Ashley has an eye for setting up her shots with those very props that will appeal to your unique style.



And seems to be able to capture that exact expression that defines the person she is photographing.







How she does it I will never know. Her talent is not mine. I am awed by her skill and sometimes envious. Occasionally I will catch a shot through sheer luck that makes me think of her photos. I'll feel like I accomplished something great - a photo almost in her league.

She has begun to make photography (and especially portraiture) her freelance career. She is good enough to make it. I'm fairly certain she wouldn't want to imagine her life without photography in it. I'm thinking it's a safe bet to say she'd give up nearly everything else to keep that form of art in her daily life.

We all take pictures, don't we? As a mom - especially a blogger mom - we have some standard equipment too. I have a Nikon D80 DSLR with a battery grip and two so-so lenses. It seemed a natural graduation from my Nikon N65 and my Nikon LX before that. I took two courses of photography in college and enjoyed them quite a bit. Before kids, I often took special excursions to new places just for an excuse to take interesting snapshots of everything I found there.

Organic Sister explained once how these photo excursions grounded her and I found it to be one of the best explanations I'd heard. Shooting photos can instantly bring the mindfulness, the here-now-this-moment that we all seek when we feel totally lost or overwhelmed.

I completely agree.

But times for me have changed quite a bit since before kids. My DSLR is not light. The battery grip makes it especially bulky to tow around while I'm already towing around a baby, a toddler & a diaper bag. If only I had a third (or fourth or fifth hand), right?

The DSLR snaps quick photos with no delay. So while everyone sings the Happy Birthday song to my 2-year-old, I can snap snap snap away with the hopes of randomly catching a shot that says, "I am sooo Mazzy and this is how I am as I turn two and Mommy and Daddy will want to remember it this way forever!" The Perfect Shot.

But that means I end up with a ton of "wastes." I have to go through the wastes and try to figure out which are worthy to keep, which I can delete, and how to delete en masse without guilt or regret. These are, after all, images of my most important life loves. Throwing them in the virtual trash is hard. What if I delete just the one that years down the road would have reminded me of them most?

Even harder is throwing them in the literal trash can. If I do sport the money for hard copies of photos, can I ever throw them away? Must I transfer them from home to home to closet to closet, always, never ending, only multiplying over time?

Or maybe I'll just leave them on my hard drive. But then one good computer crash reminds me that hard drives are far too vulnerable for such precious images. I'm busy, so I don't do much about that except feel pangs of guilt for not backing up my hard drive.

Every now and then - when life settles down enough (big belly laugh here please) - I get all inspired to really do something concrete about the pictures. I'll put them in photo albums! I'll separate them by year and then put them in chronological order! I'll put little captions under each picture so I remember what it was! I'll find a great online storage option! I'll order lots of photo books! I'll! I'll! I'll!

A few days later real life takes over and yet again, it is pushed to the back burner. My photos remain in their giant box. My wedding album (from 2002) is still unorganized. My hard drive is still not backed up. And the worst part of all: I dread lugging out my big giant camera for everyday occasions to much that I often now take no pictures at all.

For me, pictures aren't a life love as they are for Ashley. They are a burden.

As this realization was forming, I thought of my Amish builder's wife and the conversations we've had. They don't have pictures or cameras. She doesn't have that burden. Uploading photos, transferring photos, organizing photos, ordering photos, storing photos - these tasks are never on her to do list. Honestly, I wish they weren't on mine.

What other "fun" things that I am supposed to enjoy are actually burdens, if I'm truthful with myself?

The first one is easy. Driving. I hate driving. Before kids, driving was a lot of fun. Now it is something I'd readily give up if I could. It's expensive, dangerous, unreliable, and steals far too much of my time. But the worst part is that it has become expected of me.

Driving is completely ingrained in our lives now. We don't live in an area that has public transportation and that was our choice. But the amount of driving we do is uncalled for. In many ways, I still live my life as if I were in the suburbs, with grocery stores minutes away and friends within walking distance. Because gas is still fairly cheap (darn it) and we have a running car, driving still falls squarely on my shoulders for just about every party or gathering and about half our household errands. It's an expectation.

It's a burden.

Facebook. There's an easy one. It is nothing but burden for me. It is full of "shoulds." I should wish them a happy birthday on their page. I should respond to their status update. I should comment on all their photos. I should accept them as a friend. I should "like" whatever it is they want me to "like." Funny enough, the one thing I do on Facebook still is upload photos. It burdens my perpetual to-do list.

Grocery shopping. What a burden. How about doing that a lot less? How about going back to the mindset of being creative and making do without instead of running to the store at the drop of a hat?

Worse yet are coupons. They are insidiously burdensome. Here I have this slip of paper that says I can save money on something that I buy anyway. Only a crazy person (or a lazy person) would not take this opportunity to save that money! Now it does have that little expiration date on it, so I'd better plan to get to the grocery before then. Oh, and I don't want to forget my coupon, and all the others like it, so I'd best organize them somewhere. I should cut them out to make it easier on the cashier of course, and the people in line behind me.

(I could have been writing or reading a book or baking with the kids all this time.)

I'm seeing a light here. A way out of these burdens. I'm beginning to notice them and to question them. I'm recognizing that just because something is Generally Recognized as Fun (or Useful or Frugal) doesn't mean it's not actually the opposite for me. It could be fun for me, or it could be stealing my time from things that truly are fun for me.

For now, I'm reducing my driving, trying to establish solid routines at home, moving to once a month grocery shopping, continuing my Facebook fast, and recklessly throwing coupons in the garbage.

And all those photos? Ashley is so good. Why not pay her a couple times a year to take our photos for us and forget the burden of the rest? It would probably cost me about the same in the end, and I can throw all those "shoulds" and all that guilt around my photos in the trash right along with everything else.