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.