Rural Dreams: June 2004 Archives

June 21, 2004

Freecycle Buttons

I have been smitten by freecycle. It's a network of localized e-mail lists where people give away things that they would otherwise have to throw away. Computer equipment, appliances, building materials, auto parts, tools - all find new homes on freecycle.

I made these buttons for freecyclers to put on their websites to link back to freecycle. The first ones I made were location specific - but then I thought that the web is so vast - so I made some that could just link to the master freecycle site, freecycle.org.

They are here for the taking, I just ask that people download them to their own servers and not link from mine. I'd be happy to add buttons made by other people or requests for custom sizes/colors.

Posted by Christy at 09:56 AM | Comments (7)

June 20, 2004

Tag Sale

We had a tag sale yesterday. We didn't make much money, nor did we get rid of a lot of stuff. We had a lack of traffic, which shocked me since we live on a busy road. We did however, do a lot of clearing out, which is immensely satisfying.

We had three big pieces of furniture to rid ourselves of: a pair of leather chairs without cushions from a country club that my dad worked at, an enormous old dark buffet that we got for cheap at a tag sale and a big desk and chair that was left in a house that my parents bought on Long Island, moved with them to New Jersey and then was obtained by me along with a truckload of huge appliances when they moved to Florida several years ago.

It is most of the furniture that I've been dragging around for years, making it fit awkwardly in places, storing it when we lived with Steve's mom. This house is small and for the first time ever, there's no holding out for the final home. We're here and the stuff doesn't fit.

The chairs I thought I would fix up if I didn't sell, they seemed like a treasure to me. I had brought the cushions to an upholsterer to get wrapped up so I could slipcover them about a year ago. It was an expensive job for what seemed to me not a lot of work and minimal materials. I gave her half the money and I never picked them up. I had a sign on the chairs that said $20 each but after sitting on them to have a conversation with a friend and being enveloped by a musty odor, I changed the sign to 'free'. A couple of ladies with expensive looking eyeglasses pulled up and took them. They gave Steve $20 after he helped them get them in their car. I told them about the cushions and they are going to see if they can find them.

The other two things didn't move - nobody even asked about them. Actually, one family was interested in the buffet, but they measured it and I never heard from them again. They are outside still with plastic over them.

While nobody was coming to the tag sale, we worked on filling up a dumpster that Steve had gotten for a roofing job. This was the truly satisfying work of the day. Skunky, rotting carpets from the floor of our dirt floored garage, a burn can filled with trash ash and water and rotted around the circumference halfway down, several dozen Busch beer cans, a nasty porch sofa (a sofa-bed of course, so it weighed a ton), the dead bird that was behind it and debris that was under it - all went into the dumpster. The wheelbarrow was our savior.

So now our property feels less trashy (because it is) and even though we still have a lot of unwanted stuff, it is in neat, designated piles. Some stuff will get ebay-ed this week and the rest will get Goodwill-ed or given away. The garage went from disgusting and smelly to lovely workspace. The front porch has been stripped of it's railing, which didn't suit it and was painted a strange color and it's clean and neat with a wood chair and bench that we are going to paint to match the house. Steve wants to screen it in.

We had some interesting visitors yesterday. One was the family who used to live here. I didn't recognize them until one of the boys asked me if we had found skateboards and bikes in the garage when we moved in. I remember this boy from when we looked at the house. He's sweet and friendly. The other was an older woman who lives in the mobile home park. She asked about my garden in the back. We commiserated about the rocky soil and she informed me that all of the land was a strawberry farm when she was a kid and our house was the farmer's house. The farm included a pond that some people we know now own and she said they used to sneak onto the pond in the winter to ice skate. In the summer, local kids devised plans to steal the well protected strawberries.

Posted by Christy at 10:18 AM | Comments (2)

June 12, 2004

Baby Tricks

Babies have all of these cool reflexes.

When Aidan was a newborn he had a strong startle reflex to sounds. He's be asleep in his cradle and you could make him do a little jumping jack with a strong clap of your hands. It would happen in his sleep - he wouldn't wake up at all. We showed our baby trick to a couple of people who came over, but I think that they found it alarming.

The toe curling reflex is fun too but not quite so dramatic. It's just kind of sweet. If you put your fingers under the toes, they curl around your fingers.

When Aidan was a baby, my Aunt Alexa gave us a book called Water Baby, about teaching infants to swim. It explains that babies will relexively not breathe underwater and if they continue to not breathe when you pull them up, just blow on their face and they will inhale. I discovered this quite accidentally earlier this week when we had two consecutive days of weather in the 90s. I was wiping Will down with a wet washcloth to cool him off. I blew on his wet skin and he did it. It was very dramatic with his eyes opening wide and him smiling.

Babies are fun.

Four year olds are too - but they are completely different animals. I've been telling people lately that I am starting to think that we are like frogs, that take on completely different forms at different stages of their lives. The baby bears no resemblence to the child. Will smiles and sucks and grabs and is so so sweet. The child jumps in front of you and says in his STRONGEST voice, "I'm going to GET you with my POWER SWORD. I'm going to KILL you." and stabs at you (though not too hard) with what ever implement he is transforming into a weapon of destruction at that moment. This may look like agression, but I will tell you a secret: it is affection. He only kills people that he likes.

Posted by Christy at 06:23 AM | Comments (3)