Rural Dreams

Proud(?) Homeowners

First I'll say that we did it, though I wish we felt more joyful about it.

I was supposed to go up with my brother yesterday and he was going to visit a mutual friend and keep Aidan while I took care of business. I had another friend who was going to help me inspect the house before the closing. Steve had a job that needed to be finished by the weekend and we were just trying to be practical so he wouldn't have to miss a day of work.

The night before, the mutual friend called to say that he wouldn't be there, so we changed all of our plans, re-shuffled cars, and Steve took off of work to come with me.

Thank god.

The house was a mess - and had a few surprises that I hadn't been prepared for. The owners hadn't even stepped foot in the place since the previous tennants moved out. The basement's sump pump had been unplugged and there was a water mark ten inches up the wall in the basement. There was garbage and dog shit in the basement. Not a drop of oil in the oil tank, so we couldn't check if the boiler even works. The pipes seemed okay, miraculously, but the water smelled of sulfur. The water is the one thing that we had professionally checked out and I spent a long time discussing possible issues with the well company that I had do the checks. I can't believe that they failed to mention the sulfur.

Completely mouldy funky who knows what happened there freezer with a pile of mouse shit next to it. Broken windows, worse than remembered bathroom fixtures, blah blah blah.

I wanted so badly to feel happy and excited. Even Steve, who has been so giddy, felt overwhelmed. I'm due in about six weeks, I'm not going to be able to help him with ANYTHING. And I am desprate to not have the baby here, because there will be no possibility of a homebirth, and the hospital that I would have to go to horrifies me.

So we spent the drive home strategizing about all of the work that needs to be done, and what would be the most efficient way to do it. Time and money are both short.

I'm hoping that I can be happier about this in a couple of weeks. We have $1000 of the seller's money in escrow to clean up the place by the 7th. My attorney gave us the name of someone who installed something to filter the sulfur in his house for $500. Maybe a coat of paint, some heat and a big fat smudge stick will make the place more home sweet home and less trashy alcoholic family that kept their dog locked up in the basement.

I don't even have pictures, we were so overwhelmed by the condition of the house that I forgot completely to take them. It will make for some smashing before and after photos though.

Mercury Retrograde

I am not an astrologer, but I owned a new age store for five years and absorbed a bit of astrological information. There two things that we always kept track of, and we'd even get phone calls from customers asking about. One was if the moon was waxing or waning. The other was if Mercury was retrograde, which means that it is moving backward in relation to the earth. (It isn't actually moving backwards.)

Mercury rules commerce and communication and when it seems to move backwards it tends to disrupt both of these things. It's really a time to sit back and meditate, because trying to get any kind of business done is an uphill battle. Things to avoid during Mercury retrograde include important business transactions, which will be fraught with communication problems and starting new endeavors, which will be impermanent.

I warned my father and step-mother, who used to change houses and jobs with some frequency, about Mercury retrograde so much that they started to ask me about it unsolicited.

So it suddenly struck me, a few days ago, that here I am about to FINALLY buy a house and I don't even know if Mercury is retrograde. A post on another blogger's site had me wondering too - she seemed to be suffering from a classic case of Mercury retrograde along with a half a dozen other people who left comments.

So I looked. And it is.

There is a part of me that is relieved. Although I feel really lucky and grateful to finally be buying a house, it's a far cry from my dream house, and if it's temporary, well that probably means that something better is coming along soon.

I just hope I don't get sick tomorrow, because THAT would be classic Mercury retrograde too.

Holidays in the House of Sick

Are you sick? Take this number one test.

A sister in law arrived from Arizona on the 19th with a beloved cousin for my son to play with and the flu. She'd already been sick for a couple of days, so she only was feverish the first day that she was here.

Aidan spiked a fever on Sunday night, after a series of very irritating meltdowns. My brother in law was supposed to take a family picture of us when one of them happened, and he confided later that it made him angry, which then made him feel awful because Aidan is four. He doesn't have kids, and it was funny to hear him describe something that a parent experiences too constantly to even analyze like that. I told him that usually (though not always) the kid is hungry or tired, and I didn't even realize as I was explaining this how sick he was getting.

He ended up with a fever for six days - sometimes very high for long stretches, though I don't know exactly how high since he wouldn't let me take his temperature.

My mother in law got it too and we were worried about her because she runs herself ragged during the holidays even when she's not sick.

In the middle of this I had my second pre-natal appointment at the Medicaid clinic (there'll be a whole post about the Medicaid clinic soon). I was seen by a physician's assistant, and I mentioned to her that the flu was going around my household. I wanted to know what I should do if I get it, like how high a fever should worry me, etc. She told me to get out of my house. I told her that if I could get out of my house I would have done it a long time ago. Then she told me to get a surgical mask to wear in the house. She didn't seem capable of giving me any information about how to take care of myself if I got sick.

Fortunately, I haven't. But at least half of the family around me has, and it's mostly flu. The day after Christmas it was two brother in laws and a nephew. Today, it was a brother in law's girlfriend who came to see Lord of the Rings with us. She kept insisting that she didn't have the flu, all the while shivering with her mittens and coat on in the theater. They couldn't seem to understand why we didn't want to get a bite to eat with them afterward.

I finally took Aidan to the doctor on Friday evening. He had slept all day. He's always been a shockingly healthy kid and hadn't ever been to the doctor since he was an infant, so going to the doctor is an event for us. The doctor thought he was fine, said the flu he's been seeing has had kids feverish for 5-7 days, administered a negative strept test and gave a big discount to the family without health insurance.

That night, his fever went away, and he's back to the irritating meltdowns, but at least they aren't inexplicable.

I feel very protected through all of this, having not gotten sick. I'm taking vitamin C and I have doses of homeopathic flu medicine stockpiled just in case. We have a closing date for the house: Tuesday the 30th. I'm not really afraid of getting sick, I'm afraid of getting sick on that day.

Strategies

I made a set of these cards for my sister-in-law for Christmas. My husband's family is so big, we pick a name out of a hat and just get a nice gift for that one person each year. The sister-in-law that I picked is a composer, and I knew that I wanted to give her these cards right away. When I started working on them, I didn't realize that they were for sale on Brian Eno's website. I think I would have made them myself anyway. I made them a little smaller than the standard size, the words looked lost on a bigger card, and I got this shimmery white cardstock to print them on. I made a small chapbook out of text from Gregory Taylor's website. I made a pouch for them too, and I'll add a pattern for it at a later date.

I can't print from my laptop, so I had to make PDFs of everything and post them to the web to print from one of my mother-in-law's computers. Since they're already on the web, I thought I'd make them available.

Cards
I made small cards, 1.5in by 2.5in. When you print these out, be sure to select no page scaling in Acrobat Reader's print window. If it scales them, even the little bit to fit the page, the proportions will be off and they'll be a nightmare to cut. It took me a long, frustrating time to figure this out. Make the first cut down the center, lengthwise, and then trim 7/8in off of each side of the length. Then, cut 1.5 inches from the top of each strip continually, until all of the cards are cut. If you are using a paper cutter, the last card is a little tricky. I printed them at home and then took them to Kinkos to use their excellent paper cutters. (Kinko's is surreal on Christmas Eve.) I did all of the lengthwise cuts myself, and then paid a dollar a cut for them to do the rest on their cutting machine. They didn't come out absolutely perfectly even, because that last card is even hard on their monster cutter. I put them in a pouch anyway and noone will know but me. The last sheet only has one strategy on it, but there's supposed to be some blanks, so you can cut some from that page. These are the first edition ones, from 1975.
PDF of cards

Book
The book is on four pieces of regular paper that print front to back to make two pieces total. Print the first page, and then the second page on the back of it, so that the top of the text is in the same direction on both pages. Then print the third page, with the forth page on the back of that. I had to practice with some scrap paper to get this right. Again, make sure that you've selected for the page not to scale in the print window. Cut them in half across the width of the paper. I haven't put page numbers on them, so it will be a small puzzle to put them together properly. When you have the order right, fold them in half to make a book. The book cover is a separate file so that you can print it on heavier paper if you like. I bound it by puching holes along the crease and tying it together with ribbon to match the poch that I made, but there are lots of ways to bind a little book and you can do it however you like. I had Kinko's trim the end of the book after I folded it to make it a little crisper.
PDF of book interior
PDF of cover

Photo Friday - Childhood

These are for Photo Friday with the theme "childhood". I've been wanting to do Photo Friday ever since I first heard about it - right after my digital camera broke! When I got the e-mail that this week's theme was childhood I figured it was time to jump in. It's a funny challenge - I guess my entries could also be "play" - because that's where Aidan is at right now, but trying to capture perpetual motion and intensely imaginative dramatic play in a still picture is hard. I'm also getting used to shooting indoor pictures with a flash - I've never been able to do it before with my other cameras and now that I can I'm struggling with the inherent limitations of it.

Aidan got that Woody doll from my brother for his birthday - it came early and in the spirit of my brother, I let Aidan open it right away. He played with it like it was his very best friend until his actual birthday when he got a big Buzz Lightyear. It was just like the movie - Woody got completely abandoned for a few weeks. Now he plays with them both.

Gifts I'm Excited About Giving

Don't proceed if you are a relative that might get a gift from me. Probably you shouldn't even look at the comments.

Subscription to All Round Magazine - I love this magazine so much, it's mostly the creation of one person. It feels really precious to me, I know that a person can't keep up a project like this forever, so I'm giving anyone that it might be appropriate for a subscription.

A Living Wreath Kit, except I found it a lot cheaper here. If I had it together a little better I'd make them myself.

RAWA benefit cd (review) and a donation.

Homemade Oblique Strategies deck with booklet. (Heard about this from Lisa B-K)

Homemade doorway puppet theatre like these. I'm not so sure about the roman blind part though.

Little Lit books - one for each of three neice and nephews ages 10-13.

Snow Pictures

We'd Be Cold Right Now

I realized the other day that if we hadn't moved here "for the summer" we'd likely be in the barn right now. I never imagined we'd be here this long - but this is really a big part of why we came here: just in case things continued to not work out, we aren't stuck for another winter in the barn.

And here we are, in the throes of winter, with over a foot of snow. I think we've actually gotten more snow here than upstate, but regardless, I know it's cold up there.

This is how I know. My old ladlord is living there now with his boyfriend, and I've been speaking to him on the phone about documenting our rent for the mortgage application. He was actually complaining to me about how cold it was - how they couldn't really afford the oil to heat the place adequately - how they got a new wood stove but it still doesn't really help - how they use the other stove sometimes but not when the wind blows a certain way because it backs up.

It was a deeply gratifying conversation.

Still Under Construction

Here's the new design - but it's very much still a work in progress - lots of parts of the site are not built yet so links don't work, etc. It's just that this has been consuming so much of my time that I feel like I have to get on with things - so I've gone ahead and posted it and I'll make adjustments as I have time.