Entries

Saying Yes and No

Submitted entry: Okay! Uncle! I give up! It’s time to install the stove. It’s not terribly cold outside right now, or inside for that matter but it’s cold enough. Today it’s not meant to go above 55 degrees and it will be in the high 30’s tonight. It won’t be terribly uncomfortable but by the same token it will be really cozy and nice to have the stove in. So our plan is to get the stove in on Wednesday. Today we’re going to town to pick up a few things - tofu, peanut butter and a few other staples. We’re also going clothes shopping for winter clothes for all of us. We’re a little short on warm clothes this year after overenthusiastically donating most of our clothes to a local charity thrift store (we’ll probably wind up buying them all back today *grin*). Then tomorrow we’re off to Springfield for a playdate with some friends (and we’ll watch one of the children tomorrow for a little while). The on Wednesday we’re going to take Paul over to the womens’ land to hang out with his granny and we’re going to prep the stove for the year and gather a bunch of wood.

Meanwhile life has been a lot better these days - I’m enjoying myself quite a lot. I’m reading a really inspiring book called Callings by Gregg Levoy which is really resonating with me. It’s about how one’s life is filled with “callings” toward passions. Things that we really want to do but feeling comfortable in the status quo we ignore them. And as I did this I realized that I very often have ideas for things I want to do but very rarely actually pursue them. So why should I expect that any great idea for what to do with my life should come up when I can’t even listen to these smaller callings. So anyway - I’ve started a list of things that I’ve already thought of and have committed to myself to actually use that as a to-do list whenever I feel I need a project (as I often do - especially when paying work is slow). Here’s what I’ve got so far:

• Make miso
• Make tofu
• Make kimchee (from the above three you can see I’ve got a thing for fermentation
• consider I worked in large scale mammalian cell culture (fermentation) for over five years)
• Build tandoor (clay oven for baking)
• Walk the long trail (a hiking trail that goes from the southern to the northern border of Vermont) with Paul and possibly Sage
• Hike Appalachian trail (a trail from Georgia to Maine) as above
• Write travel articles and/or books about above
• Write to Bill Coperthwaite of the yurt foundation
• Build a small round straw building (hut)
• Get solar happening at the yurt
• Finish travel article about Florida trip
• Build cookshack
• Build outhouse
• Buy and install oven or stove/oven combo

So you can see that the list is pretty diverse - some of them can be done in an hour, others like the Appalachian trail would take 3-6 months and really wouldn’t be able to be done until Paul gets a little older - like 3-5 years old. Just having that all written down is really an inspiration.

Meanwhile work continues to go better - at least in theory. I haven’t actually got the work in my hands and am not actually working now but should be soon if all goes well. Then we’ll be moguls again *grin* for a few weeks. I got another call a few days ago asking if I wanted another job which would happen after this one and I agreed to it should it come through. The interesting part is that I was also offered the opportunity to travel to the Boston area to do some on-site consulting for three weeks. And despite how much I love New England and the challenge of working in that industry I couldn’t figure out a way that would be right for us now - even with all expenses paid and a good amount of money earned. I do think, though, that it could work in a few years to do this. When Paul’s old enough, for example, to understand what 3-4 weeks means and to also understand what I mean when I say I’ll be gone except for evenings and weekends and that he and Sage would be in a hotel and apartment while I worked. But when he gets older, he could really enjoy a trip to a city to see museums and the like with the travel and living expenses basically paid for. So perhaps in a few years I’ll take it on - maybe work a couple months a year or so (spread over 2-3 jobs) and live off the money earned for the rest of the year. I just like the idea of it - the whole unorthodox working arrangement of it all.

Sage and Paul are having a nurse now but as soon as they’re done we’re going to start on a big batch of pancakes (Paul’s hungry and crabby and was delighted when I suggested the idea). Then after that I might cut a little wood with him outside if he’s up for it. Paul’s really coming along in the language area - he’s talking up a storm in sentences, telling us what he likes - stories, foods, books and also has marked his turning two not by learning to say no, but by saying Yeah! You have no idea how much you depend on yeses and nos until you see what it’s like before and after.

And so I’ll wrap this up here as they’ve been nursing for a while and I’d like to turn the computer over to Sage really soon to work on her projects.

Black Coffee in the Shower

Pretend it didn’t happen.