Entries

It definitely needed a dollop of sour cream.

Submitted entry: What a day for a new century - it’s 65, breezy, with a warm sun and dazzlingly bright sun. It’s strange, I feel pressured to write something spectacular or outstanding just because it’s a new century - why is that? Calendars are a man-made creation as is the measurement of time. So anyway I’m just going to ignore the impulse to push myself to write something extraordinary and just write as usual (and if it’s better than usual - cool).

Paul is asleep on the bed behind me - he’s been sick with a head cold since Wednesday night - he picked it up at the birthday party we went to on Sunday where two of the four kids had the same thing. That first night was pretty tough - he woke up at 11:45 upset that he had trouble breathing and nursing at the same time. So we walked him around, talked to him, tried to let him know that crying made the stuffiness worse (he seemed to get that) and after about 45 minutes he went back to sleep. The next day we woke up and he was still snotty but much cheered. I decided to go to town to get some herbal medicine for him and do a few errands.

So as soon as he went to sleep (and Sage with him - she was exhausted) I left for town. I stopped at the bank to sign up for a debit card - I doubt we’ll get it as for some reason they run a credit check and since we kind of blew up our credit history by moving here and giving back the car, along with other disputed bills with the hospital where Paul was born. Then I went to the thrift store to pick up some more National Geographics - Paul’s really into them and they have a few there. While there I also found some children’s books, a vegetable steamer for Paul a tape of Indian film music (a promotional cassette from basmati rice manufacturer - who knows how it got here - there isn’t an Indian restaurant or grocery for hundreds of miles around, and a Frank Zappa tape (one of my guilty pleasures). After that I went to Teeter Creek Herbs to get some medicine for Paul. I originally was going to get child soothe - a remedy meant to help kids sleep and also with fever since Paul, while not feverish did have trouble sleeping. When I mentioned how Paul was doing to Bob Liebert, though, he suggested that we get something for his sinuses and told me the dosage for someone his age/weight. After a couple more errands I went home and found that Sage is coming down with it too - bad news since as she’s nursing she’s very limited as to what she can take. We gave Paul some Sinease which was such a help - he was noticeably better in about 15 minutes - he still was a little stuffy but he wasn’t having the big messy sneezes anymore and his nose didn’t sound as stuffy. Meanwhile I’m starting on Echinacea to prevent my getting sick. So far I’ve been able to avoid getting sick this way - or if not avoid it, lessen the symptoms so that I don’t get debilitated. Sage, however, is pretty bad off today and is at the house vegging out in front of the television in Kitey’s room - Kitey and I are working together to hang out with Paul so he doesn’t need to be with Sage as much. Hopefully she’s asleep by now.

I’ve a new addiction now too - getting wood. It’s so easy to do with Paul and allows us to be outside away from the yurt when Sage needs a break. It’s satisfying too to find good firewood and to bring order to the forest floor again. I also get easily thrilled by finds like big dry hickory sticks or dogwood. In a matter of an hour or two I was able to get 5-7 days of wood and am still at it. The wood area (it’s overflowed the boxes long ago) of the yurt is stacked about 2 feet high by 6 feet wide of 2 foot lengths of wood. I’ve also got a system to keep Paul happy which is for both of us to go to an area of the woods - say near a deadfall. I start breaking and piling wood and he plays and explores - sometimes “creatively restacking” the wood, other times wandering off. Should he wander off I leave the woodpile where it is and follow him until he picks a new spot where I gather more wood and pile it up. I’ve got three piles going outside now in this way which amount to probably another 3-4 days of wood. Of course if the weather stays like this I won’t need much at all. We have a small fire in the morning then let it burn down during the day. Usually there are enough embers in the stove by nightfall that all we have to do is open up the stove and put more wood in and wait for a fire.

We were in bed by about 9:00 last night after a big meal of black bean soup and rice. It tasted wonderful but in my opinion would have benefited from lime juice instead of the vinegar I substituted and it definitely needed a dollop of sour cream on it. We both woke up at 12:04 AM - Sage with a bad sore throat and so we stayed up for an hour while listening to Whad’ya Know’s New Years special.

I like the idea of a new century, though. It’s such an opportunity for self improvement. This can be the century for example that I’m more compassionate, or the century I never spanked a child (I was deputized by my mom at Age 11 or so to spank my brother because she couldn’t hurt him anymore and I was stronger than she was. I still feel terrible about that. It just feels like such an opportunity to further reinvent myself. I also realized when I woke up last night how old I feel. For years, probably since I was about 10 when we had the new decade of 1980 I thought about the coming of 2000 and how far away it was and how I’d be 30 then. It doesn’t seem long ago at all. And everyone says it goes faster as you get older. I’ll be a grandfather in the blink of an eye.

I officially ended the repair business yesterday too, turning down a customer. It felt good to do that. I really feel good about making sure that I really do this balancing of work and family as best I can. And doing the web design really works toward that end. There’s also a possibility of my doing some technical writing for a former employer that would prove extremely lucrative in the short term anyway as long as there was demand for my work.

With the financial situation getting better we’ve been looking into some of our dream gadgets. In particular, solar panels. There are several on Ebay now for under $100. They’re only 10 watt ones but for what we’re using it for they might do. We’d be running 12 volt DC lights and the radio/cd player which runs about 2 watts at 12VDC. So on a good sunny day we could get 60 watt hours or more stored in the batteries with one panel and in the winter we don’t stay up too late so we wouldn’t use a whole lot of it up. That is until we got more electric gadgets. With solar you’re best off running on DC (battery) as opposed to AC (like household) as you need an inverter (fairly expensive and uses energy itself) to convert the DC to AC. But with the RV business booming there are so many 12 volt appliances out there that we could have just about anything we wanted - blenders, coffee makers, etc.

So there you go - not a tremendous entry or anything but one nonetheless. I have to admit, while I wasn’t expecting a big calamity about Y2K, it was really wonderful to be here and now in some city somewhere. Even if the worst happened, we have everything we need and people are not as afraid to talk to one another as they are in the city that I feel like this community would pull together in the event of catastrophe where I felt like Bethlehem would fly apart as people tried to protect their stuff.

Spring is here?

The snow is still sticking!