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A couple of pigmy rattlesnakes.

Submitted entry: I know this isn’t the frequency everyone, myself included, would like but I only do what I do and this time I’m not even offering an excuse. It’s been quite a week here. The beginning of the week I felt really down. More of the usual, actually. I don’t really know what I’d like to do for a career (when I grow up? *grin*), and I’m still not very fond of the Ozarks. Okay, there are lots of neat people around and lots of trees and a few hills but I’m terminally sold on New England I think. I prefer the terrain, the trees (and the smells of all the particular trees), and the weather of course. The people are very different there than here too. More liberal, definitely and we appreciate that. Also, if you can believe this I miss being close to major cities. Here we’re 90 minutes from the nearest medium city (pop 160,000), Kansas City (if I could find a good reason to go there - I don’t hear much good about it) is 5 hours away and St. Louis is 6 hours away. I’m used to, even when we lived in the middle of Vermont, being able to drive a couple hours to Boston or Montreal and NY City was only an hour and a half from Bethlehem.

And as far as “career” goes, I’m really stuck mostly when it comes to home business. Web design is okay but it isn’t as fun for me as some of my old jobs. I really have always enjoyed problem solving - people with problems with pharmaceutical equipment or project management or even computers. Pharmaceutical validation has been good in that I got lots of different challenging projects, though to do that a lot usually requires frequent travel and long hours. For a while it worked great to do the document preparation from home for a big project that I was working for but when budget problems happened for a client I could no longer be afforded.

So I felt really down and defeated. I don’t really like living in this area and am not really happy with my “job”. I’d even been losing some sleep over it, waking in the middle of the night worried about the future which is something I never do. I was particularly worried that since I don’t like it here and don’t like the work I’d have to leave the area (and/or go back to the working world) to be happy. And I was further worried that I was particularly stuck since I was unsure if Sage would go if I needed to. And so I felt my options were all horrible. Stay here and be unhappy, go away without Sage ( non-option in my opinion), or go to a “real” job and never see Paul. As you can imagine those all were horrible options and I feel unequipped to be happy living here.

Anyway, Sage got really frustrated with me a couple of days ago and while Paul was away with his granny had what she might call a “small fit”. She was really frustrated that I couldn’t be happy here and in particularly tense moment yelled “FINE! Let’s just go to Vermont then!” That was a hard one for me as you might not have suspected. After all, if I thought I was unhappy for a particular reason and then were presented with the possibility of changing that reason I could find out some unwanted information. In particular, that I was unhappy for another reason and then we’d have moved for no reason.

It was a long, horrible time. I can’t say as I’ve ever had a harder time in my life. I felt that every possible way out of the situation was almost as undesirable as the current one. Finally, as always happens, there was a breakthrough (facilitated by our leaving the hot yurt and sitting outside) where for whatever reason Sage and I started understanding each other better. She changed from a person who was just being angry at me and voicing that instead of giving the help that I kept asking for into someone who really was trying to help. She gave me a few ideas for things I could do that I would enjoy, some of which were pretty inspiring. And she told me that if I needed to go she’d be willing to go with me. That, of course was reassuring. And so we left it that I’d give my best effort to manage being happy here. (My theory is that if I find something I enjoy doing here and makes enough money to travel some I won’t mind it so much) And if, by next summer, I still didn’t like it here I could exercise the option that we’d look elsewhere, a community in the northeast or even one nearby, or some other living situation that would allow us to operate basically as we are today, being home with Paul for the most part all day.

So I passed the information on to Kitey who digested it for a while and then we had a long talk about how I’m feeling and let me know that she understands what I’m trying to do. She talked about “Bardos (sp?)” as described by Tibetan Buddhism, in particular in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The concept in the book of the dead is that there are 100 gateways or bardos that a dying soul must go through. All are difficult and they have one choice as to how to deal with them. Get through them (they don’t last forever) and grow or turn back.

We also had a funny talk about how my situation is similar to that of many stereotypical housewives. When there isn’t pharmaceutical work (more often than not that’s the case) Sage is mostly the so-called breadwinner and I do the support work, hang out with Paul, cook, etc. And so my talk with her sounded much like a stereotypical housewife saying “I feel unfulfilled!” and of course the frequent response in middle class homes is either “start your own business” or “why not volunteer?” Which, funnily enough are two of Sage’s suggestions. That was a really funny observation to realize. Further interesting, though was our subsequent discussion about how we often perceive roles in a family - provider, housewife, child, etc and that we don’t necessarily have to fill those roles at all and can instead create different, more useful ones.

So anyway - after all that I was feeling quite a bit better. It was helpful to have some ideas for things to do now to try to feel better (and that made me feel better right away) and possibly more comforting to me was knowing that if I can’t figure out how to be happy here that we can leave and that there’s even a defined possible endpoint - next summer. I feel both more motivated to try again to enjoy it here and at the same time at peace that if this doesn’t work out that there’s a defined end to it.

And interestingly enough, the day after we figured that out, a letter came asking if I was interested in a big pharmaceutical technical writing job that starts near the end of the month. This one could pay for a lot of improvements here (solar, computer hardware, etc.) and also provide for some more travel and several months of living expenses. I’m glad it came when it did - after we worked all that out, lest I find myself only being happy when I’m distracted by a big job and the prospect of having money to do things with.

I’ve also started a dialog with Julie Jordan Scott of 5Passions.com after a reader suggested that I might find the site helpful. So far it’s been really inspiring to look at and I’m in the process of scheduling some coaching from her as we speak.

On the home front I also got inspired to make some new food which has been fun. I got several cookbooks from the library and have scoured them for recipes. So far I’ve made only 2-3 of them but they’ve all been successes. Very easy successes in fact. Two of them were simply “fry some veggies in a pressure cooker, add beans and water, cook for an hour and eat.” You can’t get any more easy than that. And they were surprisingly tasty too.

I don’t know if this is the way this area is normally but I don’t remember the following from last summer. Up until recently it’s been pretty hot and rain-free. And along with the heat have come some of the creatures you’d expect of the desert. While we were gone, they found two scorpions at the house. Before we left I was walking to the house and heard a slither into the bushes. I stomped to see if I could see it move, get it to move further away (I figured it was a snake and the vibrations would drive it away) and to also see if I could see what it was. Instead of more slithering I heard rattling. I thought it might be a rattlesnake but hadn’t heard of them being around here. Then two nights ago Sage was at the cooler putting some ice in when a small (18 inches or so) snake slithered across her feet. She did the same thing - stomped to get it to move away, thinking it was either harmless or a copperhead. Instead of fleeing, it coiled and rattled and she ran to the yurt. I went to the cooler later and removed the plastic and the rug that we covered it with to keep out rain and sun which probably made it an attractive snake hangout (we can cover it up when it rains if necessary) and haven’t seen them since. Now I did read on the web that this area (we live in a sort of microclimate within the Ozarks) is home to not only lots of lizards but roadrunners (I’ve seen 3 since we moved here) and stinging scorpions and pigmy rattlesnakes. So perhaps they’re not so unusual. But I’ll say I am not used to having so many threatening creatures around. Where I grew up only the weather was a worry or maybe a bear though I never heard of people having trouble with them. Oh, and deer and moose if you’re driving a car. But since we’ve moved here we’ve encountered several copperheads, several brown recluse spiders, a couple of pigmy rattlesnakes, a black widow spider and (not first hand, fortunately) two scorpions. Oh, and we’ve been warned to watch out for tarantulas as they’re around too. I am really not used to that. Of course some people would react to months of subzero weather and icy driving in the same way so I guess it’s just choosing what threats you’re most comfortable having around. And of course when we lived in Bethlehem, there was a fair amount of gun violence in the city and in Allentown where I worked there were several shootings near where I worked - to the extent that they’ve installed bulletproof glass in the first floor of the building where I worked.

That last paragraph where I say “Where I grew up …” reminds me a lot of some books we’ve been reading with Paul lately. He’s grown really fond of the Magic School Bus series (books not television) and asks us to read them over and over. And so far they’ve been really great except on one account. In both books we’ve read so far there is always a moment where the teacher does something crazy like jumping out of a hot air balloon, asks the kids to follow and inevitably the kids say that it was a dumb idea but they did it anyway. In one book they even say something like “We thought it was an unsound idea…but she was our teacher.” This attitude is one of the many reasons that I want to homeschool Paul. This blind acceptance of authority almost to the point of deification. I want him to realize early on that everyone is a human being and we respect not out of position (since that rarely matters, witness The Peter Principle - the principle that everyone is promoted to an appropriate level of incompetence) but out of respect for actions and knowledge and that he still can retain independent thought. Blindly accepting teachers, politicians, religious leaders and other public figures gets so many children (and adults) taken advantage of and those books illustrate that school plays a big part.

One thing we’ve done recently to give us more time on the computer is to buy a second battery and a charger. We’ve had it for a day now and are already getting spoiled. We can hardly use one battery up before we have a second ready to go. So effectively we’ve gone from being able to work 4 hours/day to having unlimited time. What a deal.

I’ve also been playing around with Linux lately which has been a blast. So far it’s been reasonably difficult to learn but equally rewarding. I always enjoy setting up systems, even with Windows so setting this up has been especially fun. It hasn’t been much faster than Windows but on the laptop it’s been great - Linux uses noticeably less battery power than Windows does.

And, finally, happily enough, autumn is definitely on the way. The leaves are falling (mostly due to the drought though) and the nights are cool. It was 49 this morning and promises to stay below 80 today. And so we’re already getting ourselves ready for winter. I tried to get stove cement to seal up the woodstove last week but it wasn’t on the shelves yet (next week I’m told it will be) but once that’s done we’ll be putting the stove in and probably having small fires at least in the cool parts of the morning.

And speaking of batteries, I have to go get the other one and so I’m going to upload this entry then and bring the battery back for Sage to work the afternoon away.