Rural Dreams

Progress

It's been a rocky week, but everything is turning out well. Steve got sick this past weekend and was laid up for a few days and at the same time, his truck broke. We were able to get it into the shop on Tuesday morning and on Tuesday afternoon the mechanic told us that it was either this $40 computer related part or it was the timing chain and not worth fixing. We had a slightly panicked night over this but the next morning we learned that it was the $40 part. The truck is on the road now and we have so much gratitude. The weather is cooperating too, it's been slightly rainy, but mostly cool and mild. It's not too buggy still and we have the doors just thrown open all day. Now I'm sick with what Steve had, but it's not as bad. Some friends took me out for dinner last night and now one of them has taken Aidan to playgroup this morning.

Aidan won't let us pack up anything of his without a fit, so we are packing around him and Steve's mom is going to come and get him on Saturday morning and we'll finish up that day. I see there is a new moon on Saturday - good for new beginnings!

First Dream

Since Aidan started talking, I've been asking him if he had any dreams as soon as he wakes up. His response is always extreme annoyance because when he wakes up, he wants nothing but to nurse. Yesterday morning he woke up and as he was looking for my breast:
"Mama, I had a dream!"
"You did! What was it?"
"I dreamed you were packing boxes."
Then he nursed and went back to sleep.

Published

One of my blog entries has been published in a zine called, Mama Sez No War and on the HipMama website. The zine is available by e-mailing cradlecap00@yahoo.com. It represents a really great cross section of activists and issues. I highly recommend it.

Pass it on

I'm looking to give away some yardage of polar fleece and some back issues of The Nation magazine (dec 02 - mar 03). E-mail me your address and they're yours.

Xanthus Saves

I just got back from a whirlwind tour of the NY Metro area. That actually is just a day visit with my mom, who is staying at a hotel near Grand Central Station and an overnight and a day at my MIL's on Long Island, where my mission was to rehabilitate the most undesirable room in the house for use as our headquarters (bedroom) for the next two months.

This room is called alternately the chimney room, for the chimney that runs along one of the walls, and Bill's room, for Steve's brother, Bill. When they were kids three boys actually lived in this room. A student of Steve's father built triple bunk beds in it and Steve, his twin Dan and younger brother Bill all slept in there. I guess Bill had it by himself later on. Before Steve's family bought the house, it was a boarding house and this second floor room held a small kitchen. My job has been to clear out everything in it, which is considerable. I threw away a bunch of desprate looking furniture and sorted the rest of the contents into piles: old school papers in Steve's dad's office, clothes in another bedroom, clothes belonging to people who are no longer alive in the attic, toys culled and organized, books consolidated on one bookshelf instead of two, and photographs in a colossal pile.

Then I started on the structure. The whole room has been in such a state of deterioration for so long that the whole thing has at various stages just been covered up. Whenever I asked anyone what was underneath it all I got big sighs and rolling eyes. Apparently when they were little, the floor was hidden under a layer of circus themed linoleum. Unfortunately, it is no longer there. About the same time, Steve's mom put up wood paneling on the walls. She confessed to me last night as I was interviewing her about what lay beneath that the whole project had been traumatic for her and once she was done she decided that home renovations were just not her thing. As young adults, the brothers completed the cover-up by installing a drop ceiling and pegboard around the chimney. I was told that this was a tremendous improvement over what it looked like before.

The first thing I did was buy a lead paint test. I was relieved and actually surprised to find no lead in the five places I tested. I noticed that one piece of the pegboard was falling off. I tore it away, preparing myself for the terrifying sight that I had been told would greet me from underneath, but the first thing I saw was big hunks of plaster fall off of the bottom of the chimney, revealing the brick. The whole thing had been covered with mortar and then plastered over and it was indeed a terrible sight, but the mortar was coming right off in chunks - and the chimney looked great! I spent about half an hour working on it and got fully half of the chimney exposed. Then I started on the panneling - it had been glued and nailed, but the glue had long since dried up and it peeled right off, but was stopped by the drop ceiling. So I pulled out all of the acoustical tiles and snipped most of the wires holding up the grid. That was about all I could do by myself, so I called Steve to consult. I was excited to tell him about the brick, but was a little nervous that he'd be upset about the scope of the job that I was creating for us. He was excited about it of course and we talked about all of the cool things that we could do with that room.

That got me thinking about how well we work together on things like that. And why the hell aren't we renovating our own house? But maybe we'll be building new housing. We've been thinking straw bale lately because it's cheap and can go up quickly.

So then while I was driving home I was listening to WBAI and they were broadcasting the Obies and it got me really nostalgic for theater. But is theater really for me? I think I've been pretty happy in my life without it, and I certainly don't have those "I coulda been..." kind of regrets, because that's not really the kind of theater that I admire anyway. Maybe I just need something as powerful as the theater in my life. Just as I was thinking about how hard that is with a kid, an actor accepted his award and talked about his 14 year old daughter in his speech, as if to remind me that having kids doesn't excuse you from living passionately.

But what the hell am I supposed to be doing? I like quilting and web design and color and photography. I am interested in politics and social justice and the media. I love music and performance, good magazines and good radio. I totally love and feel at home being a mom. I am interested in land use and sustainable building and development, but maybe this is only because I need a home right now. Sometimes I think I should go back to school, but what on earth would I study?

Once I lost WBAI's signal during the drive, I started to fantasize about hosting my own arts and culture radio talk show. Today I would interview John Flandsburgh from They Might Be Giants who is in a musical that he co-produced called People Are Wrong. I would restrain myself from gushing too much about how thrilled I was to be interviewing him. I'd tell him how I always thought that TMBG should write a musical and that this was almost as good. We'd talk about how 90's popular music had no sense of humor. Except for Beck. I'd tell everyone to go and see People Are Wrong at MASS MOCA on Saturday, June 21st. I'd ask him if he know anyone like Xanthus in real life.

Then I thought I could have a talk show based on Killing the Buddha - discussions of spirituality that eschew religion for wonderment. But maybe that could be part of the arts and culture show. That could work, I think.

So what do I go to school for? Or is school for suckers?

Well, I have a blog!

Here's what I know, I'm about to turn 30, and I'm finally feeling like I fit into my skin. Like this is the age I've been waiting for, where I don't feel like a kid and I'm not so ridiculously self conscious and I can order a drink in a bar without feeling like a silly nervous girl. Okay, I'm not really there yet, but I'm starting to see the possibility of it, and to have a sense of being powerful.

Long drive home alone in the dark + a little caffene = big heavy blog entry

Leaving Soon...

That truck in the background, in classic rural style, doesn't run.

I am suddenly taking tons of pictures because we're leaving soon. I'm taking them with my regular camera and having a cd made when they are processed. Last night there was a rainbow over the barn and I shot off almost a whole roll of film. It's really gorgeous here, but I'm not sad about leaving. I think Aidan is sad about it, but today he cheerfully said that Larry would be so happy after we moved because he could live in his barn again. Larry is our landlord and he is not actually happy. He isn't sure how he's going to pay his mortgage. He does commercial real estate in Manhattan and his business has completely dried up since 9-11.

Here's some pics of A around the barn: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

Today we picked up pictures, closed our checking account at a crappy bank, picked up dry cleaning and rented storage space. I will start moving things into it tomorrow.

Pictures

 

 

Bohemian Apple Farm and Child's Play

Aidan and I went to a pot luck on Monday. There were so many odd things, where do I begin? First of all it was on a Monday afternoon. At one o'clock, eating around 2:30. We only knew one family that was going to be there and of course, they weren't there when we got there. So here I am, knocking on the door of a strange stranger's strange house - and there's no furniture in there. Well there's an old sofa and a coffee table made out of scrap wood, and I can see someone opening a refrigerator. I knocked several times before someone waved me in. I would have just walked in, but I wasn't sure if it was the right house. And I'm a bit shy.

I was greeted by a rosy shining broadfaced woman with clear blue eyes, young dreadlocks, and an unidentifiable thick accent. She was very nice, giving me a big hug and kiss right away, and invited us to show ourselves around the house and the grounds, which had an old barn, a pond and an overgrown apple orchard covered in buds. There were a few other people there, but it wasn't clear what all of their relationships were. It seemed like the whole bunch of them were squatting there and drawing on the walls during their stay. The dreadlocks were abundant. Our friends who invited us arrived soon after, followed by the other pot luck guests.

Aidan eventually had 3 other kids to play with. They were all girls and they were playing like one was the mommy and the other two were the kids, with the mommy telling the kids what to do and caring for them while the kids exasperated her by not cooperating. Aidan had a lot of trouble finding his place in this game. Was it uniquely girly? I explained to the grown ups downstairs that he's more into things like predatory animals and the next day he confirmed it for me by cutting me up into pieces with a credit card, eating me, and then making me go into the garbage (the space behind a chair) and making me stay there NO MOMMY STAY THERE! He's actually a really gentle sweet kid. I swear.

While we were waiting to eat I took a walk around with my friends and we went into the barn which was full of the most beautiful birds. I tell myself that they were barn swallows, but I don't really have any idea what swallows are - just that these birds looked like they might be called "swallows". They were small and graceful and they flew in and out the window holes and around in circles inside the barn. They look like the birds on Victorian Valentines. Like they should have a ribbon in their mouths that says "be mine".

There was a man in the orchard painting the trees, and I think that he himself out there with his easel and bushy grey beard was even more picturesque than the rows of trees in bud.

I regret not talking to anyone enough. I'm far too timid and we had to leave to be somewhere soon after the food came out. I do better in soial situations with Steve, who is excellent at them, but in the middle of the day on a Monday he was at work. I will see them again, I am sure.

Blogging Backup

When I go too long without blogging there is so much to say that I don't know where to start, time is limited, and so I put it off another day.

We have one month left in the barn before we make like refugees. Everything in sight is getting pegged for its temporary destination: storage, grandma's, give away, sell. Who can take care of our plants? Steve suggested our friends who grow organic herbs for a living. The funny thing is that I've seen their houseplants - and they're dried up and spider mitey - the herbs look great, but the houseplants are sad. A lot of Steve's old stock from Loud Joy has gone to a local music store that is happy to have it on consignment. I can't decide what to do with the two old leather chairs from The Yale Club. The lether has deteriorated on the seat cushions and the stuffing flies out of them - they look dirty and ratty, but I've been planning on re-upholstering them. I've been planning on this for a couple of years now. Maybe I should let them go.

My dad and his family were refugees - I heard about his special refugee skills my whole life (mostly packing and not throwing anything away) and I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Not the skills (which are kind of bogus) but the experience of being a refugee. I think he had it really really good in the scope of refugee experience. I would make a terrible refugee. Just the fact that I can't be gardening this spring is breaking my heart. Aidan has been playing in the dirt that was our tomato bed last year and planting pretend tomatoes. He insists that I help him and wonders why he doesn't have any tomatoes yet.

There have been a lot of co-housing vibes floating around lately. At our playgroup in Hillsdale, a woman whose husband is an architect actually brought it up to me when she found out that our house fell through. Her husband is going to Colorado for the month of June to study green building techniques. She knows that Steve is a conractor and like-minded. Then we mentioned it to some other friends who are the herb farmers and they were not only enthusiastic, but they had another friend who had been talking to them about the same thing recently. Exciting and scary. We have an architect, a contractor and I know an environmental engineer and a kick ass attorney.