seasons out of time

In not necessarily chronological order, here are some happenings in our corner:

Jake the Dog (who is fine!) decided to take on a truck in the dark streets of the east side. It was a scary episode for the boys, but after an emergency visit and some meds he is back to his old self, with the addition of a handsome face-plant scar.

The boy has been busy with his Shakespeare gang, and his list of people-he-is-taller-than is getting longer. (My slot rapidly approaches.) And we made our now-traditional-yearly hike up the rock.

Also tradition:

We welcomed the arrival of our cousin Aden, who is to die for!

Life's full circle and all...made a road trip to the east coast for my grandfather's funeral. I did not know him well. The history involved is difficult, but I am thankful that I was able go on this journey with my dad and sister. It seemed to me some healing happened too, somewhere amidst the smoky, cocktail-infused conga lines and ballads. (!!)

  (watch it, heh heh...)

And the stories!! My dad's storytelling is pretty legendary...and what is better than a tale well told as you blaze down the interstate in the middle of the night? 

For the record? I think my parents are effing rad. I'm grateful that they are people I admire, and that I get to be a part of their world. Words fail me, but I guess it just makes me feel...like something rich flows deeply within me that these folks who I dig so much are my people, my history, my story. If my kid adores me half as much...you get the idea. 

Props, y'all.

Mmkay. Also the annual post-turkey backyard um, football game took place. There were many gems from this event...here are a few.

House/farm progess: insulation, walls, window sills, a sink or two, a/c, and yours truly got to slap some tile down in the bathroom. 

The field wasn't producing very well, so it got re-tilled and seeded with a cover crop to give it some juice.

Our first guest accommodations have arrived!

Just kidding. It's our neeeeew chiiicken cooooop! On wheels! (I have stopped having opinions on matters such as these. Well, at least out loud...ok, I'm trying.) 

Aaand we even managed to squeeze in a little cultural learning, museum style. 

But as far as a 12 year old boy is concerned, Picasso has nothing on the Passat we were stuck behind that day whose owner had removed the 'P' and the 'at'. That guy is a real hero, putting the 'ass' in Passat and all...Picasso could have done it too...just sayin'.

All the best until...well, with my track record it'll probably be next year. :) Stay warm and cozy, enjoy some hot toddies and naps and a book or two. 

highs, lows, and in between

so, remember that magical simplicity i was talking about? yeah, well...it's getting a little old already. things are happening, work is always being done, but it's a slow part of the process. i am so thankful to have a few escape hatches i can run to when the going gets claustro. i never thought a teensy cabin/hut could feel so spacious. all relative.

now that we've had a little rain and cooler temps locally, i don't mind sharing that back when it was still hot and miserable we got to go where grass looks like this:

instead of this:

(but texas, i still love you best.)

even better, we got to see folks who live way yonder away! and spend time with my mom and auntie/uncle combo who made the trip happen. many many thanks to them! :)

one of my favorite moments:

we visited a science museum:

and spent a lot of time at farmer's markets, bookstores, and wiggling our bare toes in the cool grass. 

and then.

i'll sandwich the bad news in the middle. the day we got back from our trip, we found out that our storage barn had been broken into. it was so full of junk i don't know how they managed to find anything to take...everything we'd just packed up from our house was stacked in precarious piles, many of which were knocked over. as many of you know, i found lots of the missing items driving up and down country roads.

there have been comical moments...i found myself saying 'hey, cool, i was looking for that!' one of the notebooks i found had something i'd written about getting clear about 'stuff' and letting it go. hm.

and some grateful moments, like when i found the majority of my 8mm tapes from when the boy was wee little, protected from the rain by a scraggly cedar tree. 

and there was profanity and name calling. on my part. 

but i'm still struggling with it. there is still one tape missing. there are things stolen i don't even know are gone. i'm trying to be ok with that. the new worst thing? i can't find the journal i kept from when i was pregnant, and when the boy was a baby. it's where my little hand-drawn charts are of when his teeth grew in, and the only sonogram pic i have, and all my private thoughts and ramblings from such a special time. so not only is it my DIARY, it's THAT ONE. a small part of me hopes to uncover it in a random box. but i know it was one of the last things packed, was in a bin near the door, the lid of which was found on the side of the road.

the city police found a lady who admitted to stealing mail in the area. we found our neighbor's mail outside the barn door. so i'm pretty convinced the same person knows where my stuff is. but we are in a neighboring county, and we called the sheriff's dept to let them know the next town over had someone in custody, but now it's been a month and as far as i know there has been no new information. hunting down someone's diary isn't really a priority. which i get, but still. it makes me ache, and brings on weird bouts of anxiety. 

the incident has also propelled me into fits of purging. which i guess is a good thing.

(sniff.)

ok, onward. house/farm update:

we have a plowed field! and right now there are teensy sprouts of radishes and chard, and broccoli and other green things are in flats. the boy's greenhouse is seeing progress; we have plumbing! i can do laundry on site! very exciting. 

and a partial driveway so that if it ever rains enough we aren't stuck in the muck. oh! and one gate down, one to go. we need to get the other one up so all those cute lil sproutlings don't become deer snacks.

in other exciting small town news, we went to a book signing and met john r erickson, author of our much beloved hank the cowdog series. the hank books were the first time i heard the kid laugh out loud when he was reading. they are also all on audio, read by the author, and you should check them out. (i also think erickson is rad because the boy wrote him a letter a year or so ago (a forced assignment, assured) and he wrote back!)

check out that spiffy shirt!

until next time, blue skies. i love fall.

           'all things at our life

are brothers in the soil

and in the sky

  and i believe it.' 

-tvz

lover of the light!, DO fence me in, and get the lead out

I honestly can't quite remember what we spent the rest of July doing, other than a stint of squatting house sitting at my in-laws and packing up the rest of our city house. 

I don't even want to talk about moving. Everyone knows how soul-sucking it is, those last few boxes that really should be labeled "CRAP", the late crazy hours. But to explain, we moved out of our fair city, packed more into the barn than logistically possible, and are living in the airstream while we work on the house/farm. This was my idea, (I know!)...but it felt like it was time to move forward, and it's actually nice to be able to answer the question 'Where do you live?' with one sentence instead of a loopy story of what is up that week. Cops don't like it when you can't explain why your driver's license has one address, you are getting pulled over in another county, but you work in yet another one. Just for example.

There are challenges to living small, but it is a magical lesson in simplicity that I am quite enjoying. 

One of the things I feared about moving to the country was that I would sort of diminish from the face of the earth. (Also part of the reason for starting this blog.) It's hard to leave a place where so much 'cool' is happening on a continuous loop. All we had to do was walk out the door, and there would be crazy parades and festivals and all kinds of people and music and food and and and...

I'm having a hard time putting into words to the collective thing that is the flood of deliciousness that has since slayed that fear. It has been nonstop almost...late nights on side porch swings drinking wine, girly days of late breakfasts and thrift store shopping time, a trip out west to a place now so familiar it feels like another home to a gathering of folk from all over the country, (including a poetic and informative reading from the book The World is a Carpet by the author, and a chance run-in to this sweet banjo player we met last May), and a family celebration with more of us in one place since I don't know when...and then the moments in between of simple meals and sunsets and work and making house into home, on a small scale in the shadow of what will be.

In farm/house news, we have good and bad. The good first:

Septic tank!

A fence! Um, I have no photo...it is difficult to get a good pic of an 8' wire fence. But this team of dudes knocked that shiz out in 2 days, and there is a lot of happiness going on the the mr's world because of this.

Water! Out of a functioning well house! Also no picture. I know, ham...no burger. 

Power! I can't show the video of the ceremony, as the husband has taken to working in his undies and didn't even put on pants for the event. It is so hot, and what good is living in the middle of nowhere if you can't work in your skivvies? Anyhoo, we had a little moment where we toasted with sparkling water and said a few words about light and love and home and life. And then:

A happy dance followed, to the tune of contemporary Christian beats because that's the only clear station! 

The not so great:

An unpleasant moment was the testing and discovery that we do in fact have an entire house of 100 year old wood we want to salvage covered in peeling flaking lead paint. All of the walls, all of the ceilings, all of the rooms. (Well not the upstairs because it's new.) It didn't take 30 seconds for that pink to show up, it took about 2. I know I don't have a baby that's going to be gnawing on window sills but I'm a little overwhelmed navigating what I think should be done (and I'm not the one doing the labor so much), and convincing the one who IS (ahem) to deal with it in a way that seems thorough (to me) and reasonable (to him). So if you have any experience and/or advice with dealing with lead paint removal, I'd love to hear it. 

(deep breath...tho not inside the house, ha!)

Ok, so even though we have some views that look like this:

From the same spot with a different perspective there is this:

So I gotta chin up. :)

One thing that is very clear to me about what we are trying to create is that I want MORE PARTIES. Obviously we aren't ready yet, but lots of hoopla and shindigs and shenanigans are intended in the future!

Some family fiesta photos (no pics of the guests of honor, really this is getting embarrassing):

Love this, life.