Yurty yurt yurt.

2006 is the year of many things for me.

The Year of the Move Back to Our Roots.
The Year of the Baby Bird. (She was born in November, 2005)
The Year of Nomadic Life.

All of that is fairly obvious to anyone who knows us.

But it is also, for me, the year of Yurt Dreams.

My first yurt-sighting was in the documentary about the Weeping Camel. Amazing film, but the homes of the families kept snagging my eye. Beautifully mobile, simple but with richly painted supports and beautiful textiles. I was intruiged.

Then I looked up yurts online, saw the modern versions, and was absolutely smitten with the architecture and light and space. I started seeing yurt references everywhere. There were even yurts on LOST last summer. I felt haunted by the idea.

I researched yurts as vacation lodging, yurts as vacation homes, yurts as full-time homes. I researched prices, builders, building code issues. At one point, I started drawing floor plans.

Why I want so much to own a yurt is beyond me. I know it can't be as fabulous as I imagine it to be. I've seen pictures of everyday yurt living, and it looks kind of cluttered and awkward-- straight furniture butted up against round walls. I know there can be moisture problems, heating and cooling problems.

My husband laughed at my obsession, and I've pretty much abandoned the idea.

But then I see pictures of their ceilings, and something in me, again, sounds that clear note that I feel when I discover or learn something that's pivotal. (He's going to laugh at this paragraph, too, when he sees it.)

But why do I feel like that?

This idea from a British mom on Flickr who messaged me recently makes me tear up tonight.
Children, gardens, bread, and a yurt as community playspace.

Hmm.

I hope he fed his children with that $150.

Our realtor called today-- first time in months he's called on his own initiative. Offer-hope rose trembling in my heart until I heard the tone in his voice, and I could tell it was not good news.
Our a/c unit, located in our backyard, has been vandalized. Busted into, the condenser coils stolen for scrap metal. The thief makes about $150, and we're out a $2,000, two-year-old a/c unit.

Can you believe that? No fingerprints due to rain, no evidence. Our homeowners' insurance should cover it, but there will be a big ol' deductible. I'll call tomorrow to find out how much. So frustrating, when the house is already bleeding us dry financially.

The more frustrating issue is, once we've had it repaired, the house is still basically untended. The thief could very conceivably return and double his money. We're going to have to lock the back gate in hopes that that will be enough to keep it from happening again.

Oh, God, please sell our house. We need to be out from under this.


~~~

Other than that, life's been good. The babe is a total joy, other than her persistent desire to eat houseplant dirt and play in the dog's food and water bowls. The holidays have been fairly simple, due to my family's decision to white-elephant the giftgiving this year. And we're enjoying our perhaps-church-home more and more as we keep going (on the weekends we're in town, anyway). We have a New Year's invitation to a party with people our own age, which feels nice, and I have a couple of nice surprise gifts for my husband and daughter, which is fun.

I went to a Christmas service underground on Sunday night, in a local (tourist) cave. Flute and female voice only. Absolutely beautiful acoustics. I will reuturn next year, with friends.
(I love our area's limestone caves. So amazing, to know that underneath our calloused, unknowing feet are caverns and rivers and waterfalls and all sorts of wonders that we are never aware of. This one had been used for moonshining, so its ceiling was blackened in one area, and many of the stalactites were broken off for souveneirs decades ago-- but it's still astonishingly beautiful, even abused as it's been.)

~~~

Oh, and that house? Yes, we're going the home-equity route. Financially, it's not the cheapest move, but life is not all financials, dadgummit. Consider this:

• We have been living in my parents' basement for eight months. EIGHT. LONG. MONTHS.



• My husband longs to be "the man" in his own household again, and I long for it for him (although it's far easier for me to live in my childhood home on my parents' dime than it is for him).



• We deeply miss our stuff, our winter clothes, our other pairs of shoes, our own pictures hung on the wall, cooking our own food. It is amazing how much we missing the little beauties and comforts of the life we've built together over the past eight years. I cannot put words to the ache we both feel, but we both feel it.



• We miss time alone with our child, and the joy of having friends over for dinner and hangouts. Both of those are awkwardly difficult to impossible to achieve while living here.



• We've found a house we love, a house that now has other interested potential buyers. In the year I've been hunting for a home in this little town, I've seen nothing that suited us as well. If we don't "rent to own" it now, another family is clamoring to do so.

The decision's been especially hard because my parents are not going to completely understand. My dad is the king of thrift, and he thinks this is wasteful-- to say nothing of his opinion on buying a 90-year-old house. And I hate to displease him.

We are deeply thankful to my parents for their generosity. We are happy and comfortable here. We love them dearly, and still love them, and have been blessed financially and emotionally by our stay with them. But all that doesn't change the fact that we feel a real need to establish our own household here.

The day that we pretty much made our decision to pursue this, a friend called who, like us, has escaped Florida ministry and found a new life in business in his parents' hometown. He and his wife rented an apartment, then found their perfect home (also an old house). They're paying double right now-- rent and house payment-- because they didn't want to lose the opportunity to own the house. They're completely at peace with this.

"Life is not all dollars and cents," he said, and something in my heart sounded a clear note. (So much of our hearts sound a clear note with theirs-- we love being their friends.) There is peace in this decision for me, even if it costs us some money. In the five years we've owned houses in central Florida, we've made more than a little money. We have some to spare, and I'm okay with "wasting" some on this.

It's hard to displease my parents, but I am thirty-two years old. You can't live your life to please your parents forever.

And oh, how we love that house. We will be so happy there... even though our lifestyle, until the house sells, will be an exercise in How Cheap Can We Possibly Live to keep that home equity line of credit as low as possible.

We'll be eating beans and rice, wearing layers, stripping ugly wallpaper, staying home and playing board games on the weekend, but we'll be in our new home.

...it sounds just lovely to me.

First steps today.

I am so proud. She's so excited, big grin on her face as she totters her few steps, soon falling.

She's brave. She gets up and tries again, not just when we prompt her. She wants to learn this, and it's working.

Life changes now. My tiny baby, she toddles. Goodness.

(We also took her this morning to get her picture taken with Santa-- a fundraiser for Children's Hospital. She didn't cry or even reach for me when I plopped her on the big man's lap. What a sweet, curious, brave girl I have.)

I'll figure out later what on earth I'm going to do now that she's completely mobile-- and beginning to shriek when she can't have her way. For tonight, I'm just proud of my little Bird.

To remember.

You'd woken suddenly, two hours into your nighttime sleep. You screamed in that way you scream when you don't know why you're awake, don't like being awake, and don't know how to quit being awake. I held you as you struggled, trying to whisper and sing to catch your attention, stop the crying. Nothing was working.

And then I had a thought. And we stepped over to the window, turned the plastic rod on the blinds, and the grand, soft, white world was shown to you. White hillsides, black trees, soft gray sky.

You froze, settled your head on my shoulder, and sighed a little tiny sigh. I held you, mesmerized, as I watched you drink in the beauty of your first snowfall.

A few minutes later, I turned you away from the window, just to see. You lifted your head, shifted your weight, and laid it on my other shoulder-- your face now pointed toward the window again.

I didn't move again for quite a while.

Bird, you saw what I see in the snowfall tonight.

That was pure magic for me. Thank you.

Here comes the ice, doo de doo doo....

The house is shaking with the ferocity of the thunder as an absolutely amazing arctic front moves into town tonight. This evening after dark, it was still over sixty degrees. It's still pretty warm at 51, but we're supposed to get down to 36 by midnight, and 36 is the high for Thursday, with 18 being the low. I think that means that it will only get colder and colder and colder.

At least 1/4 inch of ice, followed by 2 to 4 inches of snow, they say. I'm not planning to drive, that's for sure.

It's bad form to glory in bad winter weather around here-- Dad's worked for the highway department for 35 years. When the roads are bad, he has to call his employees away from their families and endanger them. He hates it.

So imagine me whispering when I say this:
It is so fun to have snow coming and nothing to do but cozy up with some hot chocolate tomorrow and watch it fall. Yay.

Our first snow in five years. Bird's first snow, ever.
~~~
I've been buying Christmas gifts for parts of our families this week online. It's fun. Spending money online is always fun to me. You ever wanna blow some money, just hand me the cash.
I found out that my brother-in-law's six kids (four adopted) rarely get personal gifts from their extended family. People tend to buy them all a few movies to share, or give their parents gift cards to spend on them. We decided, come hell or high water or dwindling bank account, that we were going to make sure those kiddos knew that we love and think of each of them individually this year. I've been shopping amazon and the disney website and ebay for them. I'm finally finished-- and now I know what Hannah Montana is can say that I've bought a Japanese comic book online.
~~~
Buying Bird gifts is also fun, although it's challenging to find something that she'll love and play with long-term. She changes so fast. I've gone a bit retro with her this year-- I bought her some beads that remind me of some I had as a baby, a set of cardboard "bricks" that have been fought over in kindergarten classrooms for decades, and about seven hours' worth of 1970s Sesame Street episodes (ie, NO ELMO until she's old enough to request him herself-- let's delay the annoyance as long as possible). I think I'll enjoy them all at least as much as she does.

It took him a while to hit the floor, but he got there.

Toddler tantrums are amazing things to me. As a mom about to enter this phase, I view them with a combination of curiosity, dread, fear, and horror-- not unlike the universal desire to peer at the carnage of a wreck as one drives by. Because in a very literal sense, THAT COULD BE ME. Soon.

But this particular little Halloween tantrum is so well-documented that it mostly just made me grin. Don't you feel just a little sorry for him? After all, he'd been told that there WERE no Stormtrooper costumes. And obviously, once they reached the party, he could see that his momma had told him lies. LIES. Oh, the injustice!

...and his momma snapped pictures the whole time. I love it.

Flashback.

In either high school or junior high, I adored this poem. Can't remember which.

What a wonderful bird the frog are!
When he stand he sit almost;
When he hop he fly almost.
He ain't got no sense hardly;
He ain't got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got almost.

-Anonymous

I have not thought about it once in probably fifteen years. Came across it online tonight, and it brought a wide grin to my face. Then it occurred to me that other people may have seen my delight in these kinds of things a little odd.

I've never been one of those people who are wired to modify their behavior based on what other people think. Even in junior high, that most agonizingly self-conscious period, I shrugged if something that intrigued me was considered "uncool."

I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure this poem would have been one of those things. I also wrote long notes to my friends in rhyme, had a pet pink JcPenney's shopping bag (rolled into a poofy ball) named "Durf," and made knotted friendship bracelets from embroidery floss a full year before the craze hit my school (which made me uncool at the time, but cool a year later when I was an expert and could design my own patterns).

I remember losing a friend in eighth grade because I refused to say that her bulimic vomiting and dare-based makeouts with Popular Boys was okay with me. I wouldn't answer questions about my sexual experiences (in seventh grade!) at a slumber party. Uncool. I kept on being a girl scout through high school despite its obvious uncoolness. I never did curl my bangs into an enormous Hairspray Cliff. And I didn't care if the popular people liked me or not, which was perhaps the greatest Uncool of them all.

Other than being smart and a girl.

...but I had a happy adolescence. I enjoyed my friends, had my secret crushes, excelled in band (flute) and academics and attended various gifted enrichment programs in the summer. A few guys liked me, and I generally didn't like them back, with one important exception who's downstairs sleeping in my bed right now. And I emerged from adolescence pretty much unscathed.

And really, I still like that silly poem.

Ah, life with a bambino.

Really, all you can do is shrug and laugh after a while.

But if Dante had it right, and hell has creative levels of agony as he described, one level certainly involves having to tend to a grumpy, phlegmy, hoarse one-year-old through an endless night where she cannot go to sleep because of the snot dripping down the back of her throat.

While the caretaker has a bad case of the same cold, no less.

Poor little gal. At least I understand that I have a cold, and know how to blow my nose and clear my throat, and am not terrified beyond all reason of the rubber nosesucker.

Failing.

I'm sorry, this post-every-day thing has been a total flop. I'm trying, truly. It's not working, but I'm trying and guilting and now I'm posting even though it's past 1am and I really need to sleep.

~~~

I got a flu shot today, being a good little worker bee who Believes the Government that these things are good and helpful, particularly when Living in the Same House with a Small Child. My daughter is also being periodically shot full of vaccinations and such, because I in my heart am a good worker bee who wants to believe in doctors and science and the government and society and all that. Every time we go, I wonder if I'm wrong, and how on earth anyone knows who to believe about this and every other parenting decision.

I mean, really. How do you decide? Cribs are Good. Cribs are Bad. Breastfeed for Years. No, Stop At Twelve Months, You Freak. Time Outs. No, Spanks. Juice. No Juice, Ever. Soft Shoes Help Babies Learn to Walk. Soft Shoes Make Their Feet Misshapen.

It never ends. Guess it's good for my sense of control-- ie, I am never in control, I can't make all the best decisions, even though I want to.

So, we get the shots, and hope we're not giving her ADD or asthma or any other widespread childhood abnormality by doing so. She sleeps in a crib, and wears soft shoes, and doesn't drink juice, and is now being weaned, and I hope that all those things, if not the RIGHT decision, will at least not hurt her. I hope God makes allowances for good intentions in these things, and will catch her and sustain her where we let something slip.

~~~

My dog looks awesome in her sweater. Kinda lumpy and matronly and silly, but nonethless, awesome. And as expected, she loves it. I'll share a picture once the last cuff is sewn on. I bought floofy yarn for the Bird's first sweater last night. Onward!

~~~

Weaning is a sad thing. During the two times a day she's now allowed to suckle, she clings to me fiercely, intent and focused. No more giggles and games and squirming; she values her time there. It breaks my heart a little, because now I'm taking away something she obviously still enjoys. I wish she'd stayed flippant about it.

She has her first runny nose and a fever tonight. Part of me wants to go wake her up and hold her, just out of love and my desire to hear her breathing, but that would be stupid.

Time to go join the sleeping husband. There's a baby monitor down there by the bed; if she needs me, I'll hear her sooner down there than up here, fretting and surfing the internet.

adios.

Financial Conundrum.

I really, really hate this.

See, there's a house we've found-- a beautiful 90-year-old house that's almost untouched, has pocket doors and a grand staircase and four bedrooms and a playroom and a mudroom/laundry room all packed into less than 1800 square feet. And a basement. And nearly two acres of land on three lots, much of it planted in old bulbs and shrubs.

I adore it with all the white-hot houselove in my nest-oriented little heart. I want to sit on its front porch in the swing with my coffee. I want to raise my babies there. (I want to conceive more babies there.) I want to shuffle up and down those stairs in my old age. I want to be the person who has its floors refinished and its kitchen modernized and its walls painted, taking care of it so it'll be there in another hundred years.

(Did I mention that it's had two owners in those 90 years? Just TWO?? And that, other than some ugly paint and wallpaper and siding and shag carpet, easily changed, it is basically completely original?)

And, based on what we believe our Florida real estate is worth, we can afford it-- even though it needs its floors refinished, its walls painted, a dishwasher installed, etc etc. But the owner needs to sell it, and we don't have the moolah yet because our property hasn't sold.

We first saw this house last June. It has been for sale by owner since then; no one has bought it. But she is about to list it with a realtor.

And I am so afraid that we will lose it. She offered this week to rent it to us with all the rent going toward the purchase price when we are able to buy it. It's a generous offer, but we still can't afford that along with our other mortgage/utilites/etc in Florida.

Do we take out a home equity loan to do this? Is that a really stupid idea? That's what I'm trying to figure out. And it's so hard to gauge financial risk like this when your heart's all pitter-patter for the 16-pane-over-1 windows and the window seat in the dining room.

...sob...

Wage Peace.

I had almost forgotten about this poem. I'd been told it was by Mary Oliver, who is amazing, but now (upon Googling to find it) I learn that it's from a poet who lives in New Mexico, Judyth Hill.

I like that she lives there.
I like that her name includes the word Hill.
I'll have to check her out.

This is the kind of person I want to be. Sometimes I hold the rubble and terrorists and confusion in for far too long, dwelling on it, letting it poison me.

I want to be able to release it and instead relish all that's here to be enjoyed. And there is a LOT to savor.

WAGE PEACE

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Knitting=crack.

Okay, I gave up on the pumpkin, as the baby's being born Monday and the SOLE source of knitting supplies in town (the wonderful Wal-Mart) had neither an orange yarn soft enough for a baby hat OR the right size OR style of needles.

So I found a spot online where I could put in a few custom measurements for our sweet canine(along with my yarn gauge) and it spits out a customized dog sweater pattern.

How cool is that? All her jackets and such are bured in our storage unit, so she could really use a warm sweater for the winter that's knocking at our door now.

And I've stayed up WAY late twice working on it. It is so simple and rewarding to see it grow. I have the top finished; the rest should follow fairly quickly. It's a pretty multicolored wool in rose and teal and purple and tangerine, and it's set off by Claire's black coat beautifully. I'll come back and post a picture at this spot when it's finished.

Plus, I ordered this and now I'm all jazzed about knitting a sweater for the Bird. I almost bought yarn today but forced myself to wait until I finish this project. I could easily become one of those knitters with six thousand skeins of yarn and unfinished projects. I want to fight that urge.

We're going to be driving for four hours today, and I'm all excited because that means four hours in the car with my dog sweater parts!

One Year Old.

A year ago, she was six hours old, and we thought she had breathing problems and an infection. She laid there, hooked up to all kinds of wires, and I nevertheless thought that she was the most perfect thing that had ever been.


A year later, she's giving me kisses and standing at the window waiting for her daddy to come home from work and dancing to music and loving the Price Is Right because it gives you lots of chances to Clap With All The People.

People told me it would go fast.

I had no idea what that meant.

I'm a little weepy today, thinking of all that this year has meant to me. I must ready the house for a little birthday celebration tonight. I'll try to share more in the next day or two.

What I'm doing online that keeps me from writing in my blog.

Only a few days into the month, and I'm having trouble getting my posts entered on time. I'm going to stick with this-- the point is to get back into the habit, and of course that will take a little work-- but I'll try to be creative with my brief obligatory posts. I'll also quit pointing out that they're obligatory after this paragraph.

There, I'm done metablogging for a while. Yay.

Here are a few of my current fascinations:

Awakened: nature-loving, hill-living mom with a baby boy just Bird's age. Love the simplicity of her life and writing.

Sundry Mourning: working mama of another baby boy just a little older than Bird. Very funny, recovering alcoholic, brutally honest about the frustrations and joys of motherhood.

Knitted Brow: Kim's an old friend (that I've never met) from my Diary-x journaling days. A teacher, a lover of good food and long walks and dogs and spirituality and many other things that I like too. Plus, now she lives in Hawaii, and her scenery fascinates me.

Sara's new preemie Isaac has me checking daily for updates on his progress. I've loved Sara's spunky, honest-yet-irreverent site for years-- anyone who would sell WTFWJD merchandise has my undying devotion-- but Isaac just makes me relive all the joy and terror and love of Bird's Intensive Care days that first month. Plus, she knitted that squee pumpkin hat that I must make.

Harris Chronicles: An old high school friend, now living as a military wife to her high school sweetheart, who's stationed in Iraq. Her posts of moose and snow (she's in Fairbanks, Alaska) entertain me, but I really stop in to watch her baby girl photos and check to make sure Alan's doing fine. He should be back next month, thank God.

Homesteading Bloggers: I've found a whole nest of them at homesteadblogger.com via my friend Beth. You need to be registered to read them, I think, but they speak to all my latent loves of gardening and composting and my desire to raise chickens and grow my own food and (possibly) teach Bird at home when she gets old enough. There's a huge range of philosophies that cause people to choose this lifestyle, and I find that fascinating too.

Mir's Want Not blog. She posts at least twice a day about various fabulous bargains she's found on the Web. She's funny. She makes me want to buy stuff. I have to watch this-- I currently have 16 servings of dehydrated soup that I bought for $2.99 from Canada, no shipping. Do I need dehydrated soup? No. But Mir blogged it, and so I wanted it. Arrgh. But regardless, I love her. So pretty. (I find it weird that I'm all attracted to The Compact and the Brown Dress and the Simple Way while also being a daily visitor at a shopping website. Guess I've yet to work through some of the changes I'm feeling called to make.)

Tabblo. This review describes its features in detail, so I won't do that. But be assured: It is addictive. It makes me feel like I'm part of this big worldwide community that celebrates the beauty of life via each other's photographs. That sounds completely cheesy, but it makes me happy that some young photographer in Italy thinks that I've taken a really wonderful photo of my daughter, and that I get a chance to see what he saw on his way to work last week. It's also a great way to share baby photos with family and friends-- I make a tabblo, and include the link in an email to them. Flickr is dull by comparison.

...and I could keep listing things. But I'll stop there to keep from revealing the embarassing extent of my online habits. It's something I need to curb, but also something that brings me a ton of joy and satisfaction and connection to the outside world.

Hopefully, as I get back into recording my life online, this will become a source of joy and satisfaction as well.

Almost vapid post, saved by Vacations.

Grr. That Ebay order got canceled because the little racer's on backorder. (I thought if they said they had an item, they HAD it, not had access to it via their supplier...? But whatever.)

I canceled and ordered it from the evil Wal-Mart's website in hopes that it might actually arrive before Thursday's birthday events. It's a long shot, but let's hope.

Not that you care. Not that I think you care, or want to record this for posterity. But I promised to post every day.

Yeah, this is pretty weak.

...


Okay, here's a tidbit that has a bit more substance:

If I could vacation anywhere, I think I'd go back to Ireland, rent a thatched cottage on a cliff by the sea, and get myself an old bike with a wire basket. I'd spend my days pedaling through the mist, nearly killing myself because I'd forget to ride on the correct side of the road. I'd take pictures, eat brown bread and tomato sandwiches with salt, write, read, bike, and hang out in little village pubs. I'd take rubbings off old Celtic gravestones. I'd drop stones down the cliff and listen for them to hit water. I'd climb up to the top of a lighthouse. I'd find my mom's relatives. I'd hope that my coat would grow moss like Frank McCourt said it would. And maybe I'd take a class on Irish lit or the Irish monks during the dark ages (they saved civilization, after all-- or so I've been told).

(This is sounding more like some kind of a sabbatical than a vacation. But whatever. That's my dream.)

If I could vacation anywhere in the US, I'd haul my husband's butt off to New Mexico so that he could experience everything I love about it. We'd attend a festival day at one of the pueblos, buy me lots of lovely silver jewelry, and eat green chili food until it altered our-- um, output. We'd take that amazing drive that took me past desert and snowy fir-covered mountaintops and Indian reservation and cliff dwellings and Los Alamos all in one afternoon. We'd explore that ghost town that the artists have reclaimed as their own out in the middle of nowhere. And we'd eat enchiladas flat while we watched The Milagro Bean War.

Then, so I could do something new for me, we'd rent a car and drive out Route 66 to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We'd stay in either the concrete teepees or the vintage trailer motel. We'd rent llamas and do a little hiking, mostly just so we could rent the llamas. (They would not spit their carrots on us like the ones behind my old house in Florida. Hey, this is MY fantasy, I have the Llama Control here.)

Of course, I could always combine the two, and we could hike with llamas through the Irish hills while looking for concrete teepees, trying to take photos of Native Americans, and downing Guiness and hot tea with our green chili enchiladas.

Eww. It just doesn't sound as nice when you combine 'em.

New hobby?

I have about six books here that I want to read. I'm about six months behind on album-ing our post-Gracie photos (a task I swore I'd keep up with once she was born, as I want us to be able to look at the photos together rather than storing them on a hard drive unseen). I hardly communicate with friends or family (except via email, which not all of them use).

But do I want to work on any of these already-established projects? NO.

I want to create Sara's gaspingly squee newborn pumpkin hat for my friend's new baby boy, who could be born any day now.

No matter that I haven't knitted anything since 1995 or so, and that I've never knitted anything that wasn't rectangular (scarf, blanket).

Am I nuts?

I have this terrible itch to go get yarn and needles. NOW.

After all, if you don't keep learning new things, life gets dull, right? And dull is definitely something to avoid.

Primary-colored plastic = my heart's desire.

I am all atwitter.

Bird's first birthday is next week, and today I ordered her Big Present.

This is a weird time for us financially. So far, we've been able to make the payments on the Florida house, but they're not small, and our income's not as big as it was when we were there. We're living with the knowledge that things are Okay Now, but may be Not Okay Soon if the house doesn't sell.

It makes me feel unsteady about my spending decisions. I recently passed up on a $6 clearanced Halloween costume for Gracie at Old Navy, feeling thrifty. (Old Navy is a good 45 minutes away from here.) Then I spent a week and a half regretting the decision. Was it right to not spend the money, or did I miss a chance at a wonderful memory (for us, for her via pictures) by deciding that she'd never remember it anyway? Don't answer that; it's done, and I don't want to know.

Part of my indecision comes from living with my parents and wanting their approval of my spending practices. Nobody, I mean NOBODY, I know is more careful with money than my parents. I respect that, but it is a hard act to follow. Dad reuses paper plates if they're not too dirty, for pete's sake.

Anyway, thinking of the Halloween regret, I decided this week that I really wanted to get Gracie a nice present-- not just a 99 cent book and a new (practical, needed) outfit or two from the consignment shop.

I had money sitting in my PayPal account from selling my grand old 1950s spaceship bike before we moved. Money that was mine, not the household's. Money that, so far, we haven't had to dig into to make our ends meet. I decided to spend some of it on Bird.

I'm realizing that I'm defending and justifying this minor purchase, to myself, by writing this. Amazing.

(I will try to keep this blog from being a wearisome list of purchases and near-purchases and fretting about money and houses. That is a large part of my subconscious these days, though; you've been warned. And I do intend on writing about The House sometime soon. But I'll try to keep it in check.)

Let me refocus. Here's what I want to say:

She is going to LOVE this little vehicle. I can't wait to see her toddling around the house, holding onto its back handle. There is so much joy in buying her little things that she will need or use or learn from or enjoy.

There's fun in bargain hunting, too, which is why visits to the consignment shop and Ebay and even an occasional thrift store have become one of my few active hobbies these days.

But mostly, I wanted to record a new experience for me: I'm getting my thrills off of buying a Little Tikes plastic toy on Ebay.

(It's true. Everything changes when you have a baby.)

Disfarmer.

I can't believe I had to stumble upon this man's images in Flickr to learn about him.

Why, with my interest in the Ozarks, in history, in photography, in rural culture, has no one ever told me about his pictures?

There are worlds written on the wrinkled faces in his photograhs.

Fall has fallen.

It passes so quickly.



Last week, the hills were on fire with reds and golds and oranges. The cemetery filled with maples took my breath away. I gaped at the beautiful four-color maples (my favorite is that brief time when they're all colors- red, orange, yellow, and green-- swirled together as the tree just begins changing colors). I wanted to go hiking (which is pretty impossible with a baby), take forest photos, see the Elk down in Boxley Valley in the midst of all this color.

But this week, the scenery's already shifted to the coppery colors of late fall. The leaves are falling off the trees in earnest, and many of them have bare tops already. The temperature will be in the twenties tonight (lower than I've experienced in the last four years).

It's shocking how quickly autumn passes.

***

My dad turns 61 this week. Next January, he and mom will have been married 40 years. Life expectancy is-- what? 75 years or so?

I have maybe 15 years left with my dad. Who knows-- maybe 5, maybe 30. A friend's dad had heart surgery this week, and it reminds me how fragile our parents' lives are, how possible it is to lose them even at this stage when they still seem healthy and relatively young.

It's shocking how quickly life passes.

***

Last week, we had our ninth anniversary. We knew each other for nine years before we married, so now I've known my husband for eighteen of my thirty two years. More than half my life.

In some ways, it feels like we have always been married. In others, I can't believe it's been this long already. If we live long enough to be married for 50 years (and many don't), we've already experienced 18% of our marriage.

My husband went to deathclock.com and determined his approximate age of death, which he has placed on his Google calendar as a reminder of his mortality. I stare at it when he leaves his Google homepage up on the computer.

How quickly it's going to pass.

Is it weird that all of these numbers and statistics freak me out?

It's not as if I don't have an expectation of life continuing beyond death. I do, and I believe it will make this corrupted, aching place look like misery by comparison. But already have this fear that I'll not use my time well somehow, that somehow I won't quite be ready when my or my family's time comes.

I want to relish the blazing of the leaves. I want to relish the last of my parents' time with us. I want to relish my marriage.

The brown-copper of the hills brings all this to mind today.

Blasted.

In case you're wondering, no, we haven't had an offer.

In other disappointing news:

I was insulted roundly tonight. That doesn't happen very often.

I've been searching for a certain type of vintage stove for months. On Ebay, on Google. Trying to find a decent deal.

A Kansas woman contacted me after seeing a post of mine on a forum. Offered me a stove for about twice what it was worth. I politely, gently showed her similar sales on Ebay. She revised her expectations, suggested a price that was on the high end, but fair. She cleaned up her stove, and it looked much better.

Then I didn't email her back for a couple of days, and she listed the stove on Ebay, thinking I was a flake. I understand, but I still really wanted her stove.

So I offered her her suggested price, she agreed, and then (tonight) I offered to have a friend make the 350-mile trip to pick it up so that she wouldn't have to drive it down.

...and she removed the stove from Ebay, and returned $50 that I'd paypal-ed to her to prove my intent, and told me that she would not sell the stove to me, that I was rude to ask for proof of her identity and address, and rude to plan to have the stove cleaned when it was in good condition, and rude to have someone come pick it up when she and her husband wanted to make the trip.

I mean, she RAILED on me, and told me not to email or call her any more, goodbye.

And I can't figure it out. My ideas:

1) She completely misinterpreted every underlying attitude in my emails-- thought I was picky instead of cautious, presumptuous instead of trying to be helpful, et cetera.
2) She was somehow trying to rip me off and flew off the handle deliberately when I asked for proof of her identity.
3) Someone else bought the stove from her, or she decided not to sell it at all (why remove the stove from Ebay when you need the money so badly, just to keep from selling it to little old me?)
4) She is nuts, or completely stressed out and acting that way. She and her husband are opening a convenience store and they desperately need cash to fill its tanks with the first load of fuel. It sounds like a make-it-or-break-it situation.

And I am sitting here at 2 am, feeling like I'm a bad person because some unknown internet woman thinks I'm a turd and won't sell me her gorgeous old stove. WHY?? Why should I feel guilty? I certainly didn't do anything deserving of that diatribe.

Oh, well. Perhaps 5) should be GOD DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SPEND THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS ON A STOVE WHEN YOU CAN'T SELL YOUR HOUSE, DUMBASS.

It was so pretty, though. SO. PRETTY.

An offer? Can it be?

Someone wants our Florida house. Maybe.

Technically, it's been on the market since April 4, when we packed our bags, left keys with our relator, and drove our (then oh-so-tiny!) Bird north to the Ozarks to move into the (grand)parental basement. Six months of waiting, two different realtors, only one laughably cruddy offer.

(In actuality, it's been on market since January, since that was when we stuck the FSBO sign in the front yard and tried to sell it ourselves. Yeah, that didn't go so well. We overpriced it and wasted precious time while the housing market continued to deteriorate.)

Several times, our hopes have been raised as this or that couple looked at it, looked twice, requested disclosure statements, and in some cases indicated that an offer was coming. We'd hold our breath, pray, count our chickens before they hatched.

Then nothing would come.

Because of that, I hate to even record this, for fear that it's another false alarm. But why not record a false alarm, since it's part of the anxiety and heartache of selling a house in a stalled market?

When we moved in there in January 05, I thought I wouldn't leave for years. Our daughter was conceived there; we brought her home there from the hospital. I love that house, every quirky artsy unusual square foot of it. Nothing but returning to my mountains could have pulled me away from it happily.



But now, I really want to be shed of it. I want the mortgage payments off our backs, the profits available for our next home, and someone else living there who loves it as much as I once did.

It's hard to know how to pray about this anymore. Obviously, we've been praying for quite a while that the house sell. We've asked many others to pray that it sell. It hasn't. Obviously, God knows who needs this house, knows when we need to sell it, knows that our timetable might not be the best one for us. (For instance: If we had our moolah now, we'd write a contract on a grand old American Foursquare built in 1916 that needs major updating. We want to do this. But does God want us to do this? If not, could He be delaying the Florida house sale so that we can't jump headlong into this enormous undertaking?) Surrender has taken over inside my heart. These days I tell Him, "do as You see fit, not as I see fit," and try my best to mean it.

But I am speaking my heart's desire tonight. To sell the house, Lord, to someone who loves it and will not tear it down and build condos on it.

Please, little house. Keep charming them, even as they learn that we don't know how old the roof is and that there have been squirrels in the attic...

... there was a showing a couple of days ago to a California couple that are relocating to the area. They love the unique style of the house & the
overall space that it has. Their agent has shown them several homes in the area.... nothing else so far is attracting their attention. The potential buyer wants to have a space for a home office, and the downstairs area would suit for that quite well. The man's only issue is the somewhat low ceiling down there.

The agent will be taking them around to see another potential property this Friday, and she anticipates a re-visit to the Kaley house...

Will drop a line as soon as I hear anything from the agent...

Little white pearls of misery.

Her teeth are adorable, and I hate them.

She grins now, and all four five six of them burst out of her smile like little happy marshmallows. She puts Cheerios into her mouth with gusto, happily busting each one into pieces with a loud crunch via her four front choppers. She chews seriously on an apple slice and actually makes progress, pulverizing it in record time.

I am so proud of those little teeth. (I need to start brushing those little teeth. Note: buy baby toothbrush. Do they stock those in Toothbrushes or in Baby Gear?) However, those teeth cause me grief, and not just in Toothbrush Momguilt.

Those Gerber "teething biscuits" only earn me a few minutes of kitchen work instead of half an hour like they did last month. She sometimes appears to be chewing studiously on the wooden end table with her top teeth, and I'm pretty sure that could be doing some kind of damage to my mom's furniture. (Don't look closely, and you don't know and don't have to confess.) She can now bite the snot out of my fingers when I'm feeling for new teeth or applying the blessed Walgreens-brand Orajel Knockoff to help her get back to sleep at night.

But more than my fingers, my conscience, or any other part of me, my nipples take issue with this sudden appearance of her pearly whites. Particularly those front four.

I decided long ago that I was going to breastfeed Bird past the one year minimum recommended by the Pediatrics Association. It's so good for her, I thought. So simple and pure and inexpensive and good for my body and hers. Who wouldn't do this if they could?

And besides, it was lovely. Bird snuggled up to my chest, fingers fluttering around my breasts and shoulders and jawline like little butterflies as she ate. The feel of her body relaxing as I gave her what she needed, straight from me (without bottles and sterilizing and heating and shaking and stirring). Watching her fall asleep in my arms, completely sated and at peace. Lovely, I tell you.

My doctor plowed along doggedly at her nine-month appointment, handing me papers about Weaning and generally implying that Everyone, Everyone Weans At One Year. I smiled thinly and mentally sniffed and plotted our rebellion. We'd go fourteen months AT LEAST, I thought.

But of late, nursing has become a pit stop in the great race of Bird's day. Let's get this over with, quick, because there are toys on the floor and power cords along the walls and Cheerios in the kitchen and a dog who needs to be harassed and books and windows to look out of and musical buttons to be pushed overandoverandoverandover again, and what exactly was it that I was supposed to be doing? Oh, yeah, drinking milk. Right.

And about then, after she's barely settled down for two minutes of suck-gulping, the teeth kick in. A micropause in her eating warns me and gives me just enough time to get my finger headed toward her mouth to break the chomp. Her tongue slides out of the way, and pow. Momma jumps through the roof every time. So far, Momma's still managing to insert finger, remove the maligned nipple, and not drop the child who has caused this unjust agony.

For a few days, I tried thumping her on the head to try and dissuade her. Her brow would wrinkle in confusion. Then she'd flinch as she bit, anticipating the thump. Then she started to laugh as the thumping followed, delighting in the cause-and-effect. Obviously, this wasn't working. I'm not willing to inflict anything more painful than the thump-- it was hard enough as it was for me to try just that.

So now, we have a two-bite rule. One bite, Bird gets a stern warning. Two bites,and the boob goes byebye. You bite each boob twice, and your meal is over.

It's not really helping. Either it doesn't compute, or she doesn't care enough about the milk anymore to give up the joys of Momchomping. I know she has no concept of how she's hurting me, but still-- it hurts me, both physically and (a bit irrationally) emotionally.

One month until she can safely drink cow's milk. My boobs are counting the hours, but I'm mourning the loss of my peaceful snuggle-feedings.

Damn teeth.

Everything comes round again: The Whys

Why write here, now?

I used to write on a site called diary-x. It died a horrible unexpected death and I lost almost everything I'd written. That somehow zapped all my desire to write online for quite a while (along with, oh, Giving Birth and Moving Across the Country and other minor timesuckers). But I feel a need to record these days again, as my daughter's changing almost daily and our lives are in complete upheaval. So, a blog. Perhaps temporary, perhaps not.

Second, Husband and I have once again thrown caution (and church unhealth) to the wind and uprooted our lives in search of greener pastures. (Don't doubt me here-- the grass IS greener over here-- can't get much browner than the old place had become for us.) The reasons may or may not be revealed later. I don't care to rehash them now.

New (old) town, new (and old) friends, new (or old) church, new (hopefully old) house, new garden. Lots to record for posterity, especially now that we have a posterity-- our (new) six-month-old daughter. Who is, of course, the most beautiful and brilliant child in all the land.

Third, we're returning to a small town that we fled without a backward glance as we went to college. I don't regret that, as we're different and broader people because of our adventures in bigger places. But the more we stayed away, somehow, the more attractive the simpler, slower life of our hometown looked. Can a young big-city couple reestablish themselves in a small-town community without some rocky times? I doubt it.

There will be spiritual musings and churchhunting.There will be proud-mama posts.There will be househunting.There will be gardening. I can't imagine that this little spot would be of interest to anyone but me and a few close friends, but if you've stopped by to watch me muse and record and laugh and rant, you're welcome here. Just say hello and let me know you're reading.

Rootsome.

I'm rootsome these days-- on many levels.

Roots, as in one's own roots, the place from which you come, geographically or genetically. We just moved back to an old hometown of ours-- my parents' town-- after 14 years or so of sowing our geographical oats. We're near much of our extended family. This feels right on so many levels. (More, I'm sure, on this later.)

Roots, as in "digging around for truffles." I'm a rooter. I love to discover new knowledge, play with the ideas for new projects, scheme and search and dream and diagram. You'll see me do this about our houses, our future, sustainability issues, and whatever kitchen appliance we're about to buy. It sounds a bit piggish, but I love to get my nose into something and go hunting for more of it.

Roots, as in those things that hang down beneath plants. I find great joy and great wisdom in gardening-- I love and live the garden as a metaphor for life. God communicates with me best when I'm all covered with dirt and compost. I'm all about those planty spiritual metaphors.

Roots are vital, but hidden. Most people don't know much about them or bother to appreciate them properly. Without them, though, the trees and plants of my garden and my beloved mountains would topple, and the earth would erode away.

Without the roots that tethered me to my sources over the past few years-- my family, my Ozark hills, my Christ-- I too could have been eroded away. I survived, but just, and now I want to strengthening those strands that held me in place. They're absolutely vital.

I'm trying to pay more attention to matters of rootedness these days. It's making life richer and more lovely than it's been in a long, long time.

And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love.

And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it.

Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God

(Ephesians 3:17-19 New Living Translation).