When it rains, it pours.

Submitted entry: A week ago we were short of work to do and so lived on a sort of vacation. We had a little cash flow but nothing big so most of our days were spent how we liked except for developing content for tyrtle.com. In the past few days, though things have changed rapidly. Today I finally received my documents I was waiting for the technical writing I need to do - about 40-60 hours worth which is good because it will make the difference between our being able to afford to go to Florida or not. If that wasn’t enough, it looks like we’ve got another web site or two. We’re meeting with some people about 2 hours north of here at Lake of the Ozarks later this week to hash out the details. And there are a few other fairly likely prospects that we’re waiting on. Oh, and we’re going to add quite a lot of new content to Teeter Creek Herbs. And to top that off I have to computer repair calls to do next week.

So we’re in the last day of our impromptu vacation. We spent the day at Vera Cruz swimming and picnicking. Paul had a ball and ran himself ragged. Right now he’s out at the house crashed out in a hammock with Sage. I’m spending the last of my vacation listening to the new Steely Dan album, drinking coffee and writing this entry. If there’s any musical group that I can say I probably play way too often, it’s Steely Dan - so much that Sage doesn’t like me to play them when she’s around. But I enjoy it anyway and Paul seems to as well.

But this week isn’t going to turn to all work. Saturday we’re getting together (probably) with Mia and Kim and on Sunday we’re off to East Wind to hang out with parents and kids and maybe do some bartering - dinner cook or computer work for fresh veggies. We’re good on tomatoes and cucumbers, having traded someone else for them but I’m told they’ve got fresh okra (which is lovely with fresh tomatoes) and fresh basil which makes Sage happy as can be as there’s not much Sage likes to eat more than pesto.

The poll was fun - I loved looking at the answers. And I have to admit I was surprised to see how young people were in their memories. My memories, aside from the couple I mentioned in the last entry, generally start at about age five. So I just figured that most people took it for granted that they couldn’t remember much before then. I was wrong!

And now I think I’m going to get dinner started. Sage is ravenous - we ate very lightly today - gazpacho and bread for lunch so it’s, you guessed it, burritos for dinner tonight. But we wouldn’t make it so often if it weren’t so good especially with organic cheddar cheese, chipotles, salsa and sour cream. Yum!

Your earliest memory?

Submitted entry: The check was deposited on Saturday and so we have money again which is just in time as we were getting short of food and Paul needed a new car seat having outgrown his second. So yesterday we set out first for town and Wal Mart and picked up the car seat and a few other things, cat food, batteries, ice packs for the cooler. After installing the car seat and giving the old one to charity we headed off to Springfield.

Sage and I have changed dramatically lately when it comes to our trips to town and to Springfield. After a blab with Kitey about how much we don’t like spending money on dining out (I think, sadly, that’s where much of our tax check went) we’ve almost figured out a new routine. We’ve been bringing food to town and Springfield. And we even were given another cooler recently which helped yesterday in that we were able to pack cool water, sandwich fixings, fruit and beans and rice. As Kitey expected it feels empowering to be that independent of restaurants. Now when we’re hungry in town we’re able to stop by the grocery store at the worst case and pick up a few things - potato salad, fruit or whatever and we’re on the go at significantly less cost than even a trip to Taco Bell or Subway.

So we restocked at the Library Center. Lots of fiction and design books for Sage, Internet Marketing, a book on the history and religious motivation behind spanking (and why it’s a bad idea), a book on homeschooling, Zen and some Science fiction for me and more books for Paul. Then it was over to Home Depot to look for 3″ rings to make another hammock for the yard (nobody seems to have them, though) and then a quick trip to a grocery store and we were home.

Tofu curry last night - on the fire again - This time, though, without rain fortunately and to bed early with a reading of Aama in America before bed.

But it was a weird night. I had a stiff neck all night which made me wake up at least six times to find a new position and at one time to find and take Advil which entailed my waking up, feeling around for matches, lighting lamps and then looking in the likely places it’d be.

Meanwhile, earlier in the night Paul woke up to nurse while I was outside peeing and couldn’t come back in. Sage was out of it with exhaustion and she didn’t get to him until I came in. So I told him that I was bringing him to her. Unfortunately I think he was disoriented too as instead of doing my usual routine - take him outside to pee then bring him to Sage I just sat him on the floor next to her and told him “There’s mama, you can nurse now” but I think he was confused because instead of nursing he proceeded to pee, fortunately missing the half-asleep Sage’s head. Sage says that she slept poorly after that though and so we both woke up tired this morning.

After a whirlwind preparation of a fire I left for a teaching job with one of the people in the area we’re building a website for. After a couple hours of training I left, with 5 lbs of fresh organic tomatoes, carrots, eggplant, cucumbers (regular and lemon), cabbage, potatoes and 5 more pounds of organic beef (when we ran out of money last week instead of bartering with it the beef we intended to barter with we ate it). It’s a great arrangement. We certainly wouldn’t be eating this much great fresh organic produce if we had to pay cash for it and they get to barter for a website. Everyone wins. Next week they’re going to look at the brakes on the car that need some work so more of a great deal!

Then it was off to town to pick up propane (YAY!) and home to cook lunch. Even after only three days without a gas stove it seemed like a complete luxury to have it back. What a lovely thing to be able to cook without 30-45 minutes of preparation beforehand. But of course nothing tastes as good as a curry cooked over a fire. It’s as if the seasonings were originally developed for cooking with wood and when you actually cook it on a fire it’s as if a missing secret ingredient were added.

So now Sage is at the house preparing for our next revamped site. We’re bringing the gallery back and this time we’re setting it up to take credit cards. We realized that neither of us really started it to make money for ourselves particularly but rather to help artists. So we’re going to work with an online payment system that charges a percentage of the sale. It takes most of our profit out but who cares as we’re not in it for the money. I’m feeling pretty inspired about the whole thing. We’re brainstorming for new ideas for promoting it and also for a redesign.

Paul’s also at the house with Kitey having a “Granny’s Room” time - they play in her room in the house about every day and also to have a wash with peppermint castile soap (great for insect bites). A few days ago while there he had a great exciting time. A neighbor was having their driveway re-gravelled and so down the road came a dump truck with a tractor with a bulldozer blade on it. He’s still telling stories about it - “Dump truck - you [he calls himself you] touch - big noise SHHHH! [air brakes]” I love listening to his stories and impressions and he’s having more and more of them as he gets older. He even told me about a dream he had about the bulldozer last night. And today he was making up a story with his granny about a flying bulldozer. What a trip.

Cooking on the fire in the rain.

Submitted entry: We’re still out of propane, the flies are still here but we’re much cheered. Well, for one thing we’re better than we remember at cooking on the fire. Sage got a fire going today with wet wood while the rain was coming down steadily. No small feat, that. And the whole time was completely cheery. Meanwhile I was on a fly-killing spree inside. I think I got a bunch and there are noticeably less (you can’t hear them as much) but still I think we’re going to have to be complete hillbillies and get a fly-strip in town on Monday when our paycheck clears.

The fire got even easier to manage when I remembered that we had a piece of tin under the yurt to put over the grate - keeps the fire from being rained on. Then I had another revelation and got the air pump for the broken solar shower (it leaked but pumped nicely) and using it as a bellows made a roaring fire on top of a bed of glowing white-hot coals. So now we have a pot of rice cooking outside in the rain as easily as if we had it on the stove. So while things may not be going swimmingly we’re still having a great time.

Last night we had a fun night. After dinner I went to upload Sage’s entry. I don’t know if I fully described how we do that. All we need to do is get within about 100 feet of the house and we can get an internet connection by radio from our LAN inside. While I was sitting out there I noticed that it was really noisy with cicadas and hounds and whatall. Remembering that I have a microphone on the laptop I recorded a bit. The sound quality isn’t the best but I think it probably gives you an idea of just how not quiet it is in the country. You can listen to it here [link broken]. Be advised that it’s a little over 200K (I didn’t edit or optimize it at all) so it may take a little time to download. The notify list people already heard about it but I wanted to share it with anyone who is interested.

Then I came home and Sage and I looked at some more sites in need of redesigning but didn’t have the energy to do anything but look. After that we read more of Aama in America - A Pilgrimage of the Heart by Broughton Coburn. A fun book about an 84 year old Nepalese woman’s first visit to the US. We’re having a ball with it and while we don’t like the author a whole lot and think his relationship with his soon-to-be wife really needs help, the story is compelling. We’ll post a review when we finish.

Today was not much out of the ordinary short of cooking on the fire (which a year ago we did as a matter of daily routine rain or shine) and all the rain which while a blessing makes cooking a challenge, albeit a fun one for now.

And all that said I’ll end it here, go outside to fetch the pot of rice off the fire (almost said stove - with the tin over it it sort of looks like a little one!) and perhaps write a bit more.

The Great Fly Plague

And the six o’clock news says… The Great Fly Plague of Summer 2000 has begun, folks. Hang on to your hats, lest they are wrested away by a troop of forty seven flies acting in tandem. Every drug store in town is sold out of fly strips. Is this the end of civilization as we know it? Tune in at eleven, when Perky Strumpopple will go over some tried and true tips to survive this year’s plague.

There are more flies in this yurt than there are people on this side of the Atlantic, I swear to god. Dishes washed? Check. Floor scrubbed? Check. Clean sheets on the bed? Check. Cat food swept up? Check. Since we’re 80% sure that the cats haven’t dragged a dead mouse into the depths of the kitchen recess a la Danny Drennan’s New York Diary, we are at a loss. Todd killed over three dozen of them and it hardly PHASED them, except they got better at flying away.

Last night, as Todd was sauteing the onions for tofu curry (not burritos, you should be proud) he groaned. “We’re out of gas for the stove.”

Not a tragedy on a good day, but after a day in which Paul had been a crackpot for hours (more fool me, I had barley malt sweetened carob in town and it went right through my breastmilk into Paul’s wackjob impulses). Not only that, it had just rained — which, you know, hooray because the drought isn’t so much a problem, but boo hiss because all the wood outside was wet. But hey, we soldiered through and I managed to make a fire with wet wood and felt quite pleased with myself.

Today, during the hour it took me to make bowtie pasta (No. Really.) on the fire outside I began to learn to draw cartoons. During this last trip to the big library, I looked for books on learning to draw. I do know how to draw, but I can certainly improve, and ironically I was looking for something extremely logical and straightforward (not very likely in the art world) but they hardly had any instructional books. Anyway — oh, newsbreak, Todd is giving me periodic updates on how many flies he’s killed or taken outside (long story) and he say, “Half a dozen…eight…four…” It’s like living with the Brave Little Tailor. Next time at East Wind someone will misunderstand him and tell everyone that he converted 7 religious conservatives at one blow. Newsbreak over.

I brought home this cartooning book because it seemed the least likely to be dumb, and wow — it’s fascinating. I’ve always had an interest in cartooning but haven’t known how to do it and this book is helping me understand a lot.

I’m almost finished with the Moon Bag, the one that we traded for one of you paying for the domain name. Just a few more rows, the liner, and the strap, and I’ll be done. Paul likes looking at it, and can identify the objects on the bag (moon, person, trees) without any help. He’s fascinated with crocheting, and I’m looking forward to teaching him how in a few years.

Todd and Paul are sitting on the bed, talking together. Well, sort of. “Would you like some burrito?” “Claire,” Paul says, looking at Claire the cat. “Sweetie? Burrito?” “Guess how much love you,” Paul says the name of his favorite book (without the “I”, he’s not fond of pronouns). “Are you hungry?” “Claire. Guess how love you.” And so forth. Tee hee. It’s like listening to an existential play, especially now that Todd’s snapping his fingers, saying, “Snap, snap, snap…”

Well, cross your fingers, the plague has abated. Probably all the little f– er, the charming lovely flies have gone to sleep for the night and will be buzzing around tomorrow morning. Any recommendations or suggestions would be welcome.

The news made me dizzy.

Submitted entry: Gad, what a day yesterday was - so hectic that I broke my vow to keep content (even recycled Rewind content) coming. It all started when I went to the house at about 9:00 to check mail and start some laundry. There was an email from my brother with the subject line “IMPORTANT” saying that he really needed to get in touch with me and had lost my number - could I email it to him? (I don’t have his number as he shares a house with my dad and stepmom and I don’t talk to either one (never have even met the stepmom)). ANYWAY - I sent an email saying I’d be waiting at the house in a 1/2 hour or so and to give me a call ASAP. I went back to the house, my mind racing worried about what could be wrong. Last time he sent a message like this my grandmother had died. This time he felt more upset it seemed so what could it be?

Sage and I and Paul went back to the house and sat with our feet in the water for a while keeping cool while waiting for the call. A few minutes later he called.

Sean’s not very good at getting into a serious conversation and so still, despite the information he was about to pass on he said “Hi, how’s it ‘goin?” followed after my answer of “What’re you doing?” (waiting for you to call, silly!) at which point he told me that he had some terrible news - that our mom had died.

Now let me preface the rest of this for those of you new readers with the following information. From about 1982 onwards my mom was a 12-18 beers/day alcoholic, hit both my brother and I with belts and wouldn’t stop drinking no matter how much we pleaded and even after my dad left (not that he’s a saint or anything but that’s another story). In 1992 Sage and I changed our telephone number after a pretty rough time with my parents (both of whom drank heavily at the time) and cut off communication completely. I haven’t spoken to either of them since.

So you can possibly see how on the one hand this was a pretty easy thing for me to deal with. In addition, she has been really sick and in and out of the hospital off and on with various breathing problems, and really was (last I knew of her) having a really desolate life emotionally so this was something of a relief - that her physical and mental suffering are over.

So I did fairly well, despite being made somewhat dizzy by the news (I had to sit down - literally) until we started walking home at which point I lost it for a while, beating myself up for not having talked to her and for her not knowing that she was a grandma. Sage was helpful in reminding me why we didn’t talk and also that given the way she was around Sean and I that she was afraid to have Paul anywhere near her and we had agreed to keep him away for those reasons.

Anyway - I left the phone call saying that I’d check into coming up there for the memorial - not that I wanted to go myself but assuming that Sean would need me there.

So then we got on the phone and tried to figure out how to get me to Vermont by Friday. First we checked airlines - cheapest we came up with was $1200 and required 4 hours of driving in Missouri and 2 1/2 hours of driving when I got there. Bus wouldn’t have got us there in time ($600 for a 46 hour trip) and our car needs the back brakes fixed before a long drive. Car rental is out due to cost too so we pretty much exhausted our options even if we didn’t have to borrow money to do anything (which we did).

So Sage and I and Kitey talked for a while and Kitey wanted to know why I was going and I told her to support Sean and that I needed Sage and Paul to come along with me for my support. So then she wanted to know if I needed to be physically there to support him or if he could come here or we could do it on the phone (“I don’t know” I said) and not only that but that I didn’t even know if he really needed me (I just assumed). So I resolved that when he called me in the afternoon I’d tell him what I knew about prices and that if he could help me financially (he offered to) and needed me, I’d come up by bus.

He called at 6:00 and we had a wonderful talk, not just about mom but about how our lives are being. I realized then that I think it takes him a good 20 minutes to get into a serious discussion and usually more which is why often his emails are short and to the point “Not much new here…” And no, he was doing well enough that he didn’t feel I needed to come up and instead we agreed to have a phone date after the service to see how we’re both doing.

So it feels kind of weird in a “What does everyone think of me” sort of way to not go to my mom’s funeral. That’s me, always worrying about what people think. For the same reason I feel weird having a nearly normal day today and only once in a while remember that she’s dead.

But then that’s probably not unexpected given what has happened. In particular, I think that I already grieved for her and that happened almost ten years ago. Sage and I were living in Framingham and I got off the phone after a particularly nasty call (she was drunk as usual) and it was at that point that I realized that the mother I grew up with, the one I loved no longer existed and probably hadn’t since the early eighties. And that was one of the hardest nights of my life, emotionally. I spent a good part of it in tears and most of it really sad. That was the night I gave up ever seeing or hearing from her again.

And that was the person whom I missed yesterday too. And now that she’s dead somehow most of my bad memories have been released and I feel more free to remember her as I like to.

So how do I like to remember her? I like to remember her as the woman who changed my life completely for the good early on by teaching me to read when I was Paul’s age. She read to me incessantly (yesterday I found a picture of her reading to me as a 2 year old - it was really touching). When I was able to read on my own she would help me learn other things - I learned mathematics by playing “Store” with her for household items, giving and receiving change. She helped me write my first book (she did the actual lettering) by picking pictures from magazines on a theme (I chose electricity) and I dictated the text to her. As I started to be interested in more complicated subjects she didn’t know about she got me workbooks on science, dinosaurs and other topics or took me to the library. I still know all the states and capitols and where they are because of the game we’d play with the 50 states puzzle I had back then. I’d close my eyes and she’d take out a piece and it was my job to guess which one. When at five I taught myself to doggie paddle and wanted to know more about swimming she got me enrolled in lessons. She was the facilitator that I try to be with Paul now - helping connect me with information about my interests. And as I look at the old pictures of us together I realize that when I was first born (she confessed later that it was contrary to doctors advice that I was conceived - she was on various drugs for mental illness) she had the same intentions that I have with Paul. To do her parents one better.

So I don’t feel like I need to go to a memorial at all to see her off or pay my respects or anything like that. I intend to be a living memorial to her. To try to carry on the work she started by being the best parent I know how to be - to do what she was doing before she got wrapped up in alcohol and other issues that helped to continue a cycle of suffering for her that didn’t end until a couple of days ago. And in many ways I feel that’s better. I feel like going to Vermont and standing in a cemetery watching her casket be lowered would in many ways be going through motions I feel are somewhat insincere or would be for me considering I’m not a Catholic and it’s a Catholic service.

So in many ways, her passing has been helpful. To her, in my opinion ending the suffering of this lifetime and for me almost freeing from all the bad that is my past twenty years of bad memories and allowing me to focus on what mattered to her 30 years ago and what really matters to me now.

Dogs are just stupid. They are. There’s nothing you can do about it.

Last night, just as the sun was going down, I went to the house and sat outside in the hammock checking email (”Trash your alarm clock and fire your boss!” “YOU TOO can make thousands of dollars!”) and wandered over to Danny Drennan’s site. I was thrilled to see that he’d finally written the 90210 wrap-up for the series finale, and I think it was while I was sitting in the hammock, cackling away at the first paragraph of the wrap-up that the dogs started growling and barking at the hammock. “HEY! Where did you come from! Rank, name, and serial number!”

I called to them and said hello, and they sheepishly wagged their tails and sat down.

I saved Danny’s wrap-up on the laptop and brought it home to show Todd. We sat and read it silently together, and sometimes I was laughing so hard I had to lean against the yurt wall to keep myself sitting up. We kept reading until the laptop began its panicked “oh help, help, low battery, emergency, call 911, eep” beeping and turned the beeping off, then read until the computer shut itself off in frustration.

The night was hot, and Todd read eight pages of The Longest Road to me before I started to get hungry again and decided to fall asleep instead of listening to any more. This book is about a couple, an English man and a Japanese woman, who decide to walk from the tip of South America to Alaska. The man says that when he met the woman, they couldn’t speak each other’s languages at all and had to rely on a pocket size Japanese/English dictionary for their marathon three hour conversations. I thought, how odd. What attracted — I don’t mean sexually, maybe interested is a better word — them to each other, then? For me, it’s conversation that makes someone interesting. Hearing someone’s opinions, or stories, or thoughts is what makes me want to talk to them more. Any ideas?

(Big parenthetical thought: Kitey is reading a book about left and right brain-ed-ness. She sat down with Todd and I one day at the watering hole and asked us a question which demonstrates if you tend more towards being left or right brained. First, she had us say the months of the year in chronological order. Then she had us say the months of the year in alphabetical order. Now you do this, and don’t read the rest of the paragraph until you do, or you’ll ruin the whole game.

Finished?

Okay. So I could barely recite them in chronological order, but by closing my eyes I could recite them in alphabetical order without much trouble. Todd had exactly the opposite problem. This is a pretty reliable test of whether you’re right or left brained. (Todd’s left and I’m right, but we all knew that anyway.) End huge parenthetical thought.)

The book — remember, The Long Walk, about the two people walking across North America? — is fascinating, but already the man, who wrote the book alone, is getting on my nerves. Okay, I know that people talk strangely when they’re learning a new language, but his renditions of Yoshiko’s words sound like they’re directly out of a Charlie Chan movie. “George, you so silly. You make joke, even now.” I guess it never occured to him to learn Japanese so they’d be on equal footing. He’s so…patronizing. It reminds me of something a man married to an Asian women I knew once said, “But Sage, I like Asian women because they’re so dependant and submissive.” The memory of this made me fall over laughing when I heard the marvelous Magdalen Hsu-Li lyrics: “He wasn’t really all that bad, just cynical and underpaid, like all the years had never filled some need, I really thught he was my friend until one day he opened up and said, ‘Why can’t ou be submissive like you Asian girls should be?’” The story gets even funnier when you know that the wife was in absolute control of the relationship and he did anything she wanted him to do.

At about three a.m. Paul woke up in the bed with Todd and said, “See Mama! Nurse!” and I switched with Todd and got into bed with Paul and nursed him. I felt crabby and scowly when I realized that it was STILL horribly hot and miserable and I was covered in sweat. I dozed for a little while, and then Paul wanted to nurse again. I let him, and then when he wated to nurse again I sat up and said in a weary way that I needed to eat myself before I nursed him any longer. I got myself some refried beans from the night before (I know, it seems like that’s all we eat. Send the name of your favorite food — that you make at home, no frozen pizza! — and if you feel really inspired, the recipe too, and we’ll post the results here, maybe inspire everyone.)

I went out to the platform to eat, where it was maybe a degree cooler, and felt crabby and mean and out of sorts. Todd said that he’d gotten the cd player inside, and if there were any books I cared about outside I should get them inside because it was going to storm soon. I looked up into the sky, where I could see flashes of lightening, and thought yeah, right, it’s heat lightning, I hate the summertime, I want to go to sleep, etc. and so forth.

Paul appeared in the doorway, his body outlined by the oil lamp that Todd had lit. “See Mama!”

“Sure, come on out here.”

He made his way out to the platform, whispering, “Dark…dark…dark…” to himself as he went.

Something about hearing him do that transformed my whole mood and by the time he got out to the platform I was smiling. I fed him some beans and gave him a hug, and when I was finished eating we sat in the hammock together watching the lightening and hearing thunder quietly rumble in the distance.

“Nurse, Mama,” he said.

“How about a story instead?”

“Boom story,” he replied, meaning he wanted to hear about the lightening.

“Once upon a time,” I said, “there was a boy named Paul. He and his Mama and his Daddy all woke up at three o’clock in the morning. It was so dark that he couldn’t see anything at all outside, and…”

Even hotter today than yesterday.

Submitted entry: Kitey went to the house a little while ago to be in the water. Paul, noticing a few minutes later that Kitey was gone wanted to go too and so Sage left with him. I think Sage should be back soon, though as I made a big pot of spaghetti. Pasta’s been a big lunch staple lately, partly because it’s quick and therefore the stove isn’t on long and partly because it doesn’t seem to heat us up like other food. At least it doesn’t with the right condiments. We’re both pretty sick of tomato sauce, particularly from the store. So lately it’s been either garlic and olive oil or oil (or butter) and parmesan cheese. I’m getting sick of those, though so I had an experiment this time. I made Sage’s as usual with butter and cheese. Mine I ran under cool water to make it sort of cold then added julienned fresh cucumbers (no seeds) and Chinese hot bean paste. I won’t say definitively that the experiment was a success but I think there’s potential. First off, it turned out really spicy which helps us all get through this heat for some strange reason. The flavor was pretty good too, though I added way too much to my pasta and got a bit overwhelmed by the end. I might try it again someday.

Over on b2btalk we’ve been talking a little about good summer foods and ways to beat the heat (for those of us who actually have heat, Andrea). So far we’ve come up with oranges (I think we’ll probably live somewhat on fruit this summer - we’ve eaten almost all of our peaches in a day for example), cold soups and food from countries where it’s often hot. That last one’s my favorite and the inspiration for today’s lunch. There’s nothing like a fiery Thai curry in the heat of the evening.

We’re lucky though - every night the yurt cools down in a few hours so last night Sage was under a flannel blanket by morning. It helps a lot to be able to always look forward to a cool time of the day. During the summers in Bethlehem before we got air conditioning there were weeks that I was only cool at work or out shopping (no air in the car at that time). More than once, Sage and I would wake up at 3:00 AM and have a cold shower and still be sweltering in minutes.

I was thinking today about the tradeoffs of a traditional workplace versus how I work. If I were a full time employee of the company I’m consulting for I’d be in a nice air conditioned office or trailer with a pot of coffee or a cafeteria where I could get coffee nearby. Here I have none of that sort of thing. I do, however have the ability to get paid for lying in a hammock with a laptop with trees all around, my son playing nearby and loud music. All of which feels decadent on so many levels and I would find it very hard to go back to the traditional workplace though I have to say I have yet to find a really good way to have a mug of coffee in the hammock (a travel mug isn’t the same. I swear it tastes different.

We got an email yesterday confirming that Sage would be welcome to present at JournalCon. We’re pretty sure we’ll go though we haven’t figured out how to finance it just yet. If the work comes the way it was promised from my employer we’ll be fine but so far it has been lots slower. So we’re looking for creative ways to finance the trip. Anyone up for a pledge drive? We won’t interrupt your programming as much as NPR but we might be just as pathetic *grin*. And who knows - we may see many of you there!

And as it’s nearing the end of my cup of coffee I’ll end it here and who knows, there may even be another one tomorrow.

And now it’s about an hour or maybe a bit more later. Paul came back with his granny, sat in the hammock with me while I read to him some from the book I’m reading (Is it Utopia Yet? by Kat Kincaid - there are cartoons in it he’s fond of) and drifted off. Just before he drifted off I was all alone here and the Fed-Ex truck came with more work for me to do. Sadly, nobody met him so I’m hoping the stuff doesn’t get sent all the way back to Pennsylvania and instead stay at a local pick-up place.

Oh, and a sort of sad and amusing (at the same time) conversation with Sage and train of thought. I mentioned to Sage that while we were in Pittsburgh we could head for a side-trip to visit people in Vermont (and Meadowdance and she laughed and said that it was a good idea but she was worried I wouldn’t come back. And the more I think of it I think for similar reasons it’d be a bad idea for me to go as I think I’d really be motivated to moving back east again whether to Meadowdance, some other situation, Vermont or my old life. Then I joked how I’d go off someday on the trip and buy a suit and be visiting my old employers asking to work again. It’s not that I miss working, just living back east and even if Sage were willing to move back east I can’t think of how we’d be able to make a living without one of us working full-time again. And as I said yesterday I’m really happy with the lifestyle and even okay with the location. Just that if given the opportunity to move our whole life back east (a virtual impossibility I realize) I’d do it. And as if to comment on virtual impossibilities I looked to my right and there was a tiny red ant carrying this one enormous leaf over a bunch of dead leaves. Make of that what you will.

Swinging Lazily in the Hammock

Submitted entry: I think we’re getting the hang of being alive in the summer slowly but surely. Our schedule is rearranging itself nicely so that during the hot part of the day we’re either working quietly while Paul sleeps (he has his naps in the hammock now since the yurt gets too hot) or we’re sitting with our feet in a tub of cold water. Oh, and it really matters what you eat too - I forgot that for a while and would eat a big dinner and be hot all night. Seems like we’d forgotten about our summer dishes. Our lunches of gazpacho and pasta salads (quick one is cold pasta with italian dressing) and this chickpea and onion and butter thing for dinner. Not only do we keep cooler eating light but there are things that just taste better in the summer and others that do in the winter. We’ve all but left behind red beans and rice in favor of a tofu curry. And I remember the opposite happening in the winter - we had a long spell without red beans and rice then made it and said “Wow! Why haven’t we made this in so long?”

Our “empire” is expanding now that summer’s here. Where in the winter we had only the yurt with a diaper pail next to the door and a compost bucket and poop bucket a distance away we’ve added a bunch of stuff for our outside summer life. First came the platform in early spring - a bunch of boards covered by plywood (which wasn’t even level until last week). That was great since the ground here is really rocky and the leaves get itchy in shorts. Then came the (buried) cooler which we put in the ground about 50 feet up the path from the yurt (we chose the site because a tree had died there a long time ago which pretty much ensured that it’d be easy to dig where the tree was (otherwise there are way too many rocks to even bother digging). And most recently came the hammock between the cooler and the platform. Oh, and last night we chained the CD player up off the ground in a tree (so Paul can’t reach it. It all feels pretty decadent if you ask me.

Made another trip to someone’s house for tutoring - they’re new to computers - and headed home with not only a little cash but another bag of beets and some just-ripened peaches that taste like nothing I’ve ever had in my life. These people really know how to grow food. Everything they give us is outstanding and better than anything I’ve ever bought at a store or even a farmers’ market. Next week we’re bartering for some brake work on the car. I can’t say enough good about bartering for things you need or want.

I also called my boss (yeah, I still have one) and asked to have way more work sent so hopefully in the near future I’ll have a ton of work to do so we can not only get by comfortably but save a little for the trip to Florida to visit family we hope to take at the end of next month. I might even be able to bring some more work along and if we’re frugal on the trip and I work an hour or two every day I might even be able to pay for the trip as we go. Ah the joy of telecommuting.

I’d like to have a fair amount of money as I’d like to take the trip slowly and maybe follow the Gulf of Mexico so that Paul can see the ocean and be in it some instead of taking the usual way through Tennessee and Georgia. Sage, though, tends to be something of a taskmaster when it comes to roadtrips so our goal might well be to get there as fast as possible. Kitey is possibly going to visit some of her family then too and if so that’ll help as she doesn’t like to rush trips either. Our plan would be to camp our way there which could save us some money too. Hey, with a camp stove the amenities wouldn’t be much different from what we have here and would even be better than what we had when we first put up the yurt - no kitchen and cooking on a fire for instance.

Hey, and we got a response to one of our “your site needs help” emails - it’s pretty exciting. We hope to meet with them in the next week or so. The prospect of a new web job is always exciting to me.

I think soon I’m going to get back on the photo train for these entries. I know it’s been a while without them but now that we have everything at the yurt it should get easier. I was going to put one of Sage in - it was really cute - she was working outside on the laptop, a boombox chained up in a tree (so Paul doesn’t play with it), her hand on a mouse and all of her head but for the fuzz of a crewcut hidden by the laptop’s LCD screen. Maybe you had to be there. But anyway, I went to take the picture and the batteries in the camera were completely dead.

For a while we’ve been “playing beans” with Paul - a toddler activity book suggested it and we used a bunch of old chickpeas to do the job. Today, Sage and Paul played with them while I was having a shower at the house. When I got back Sage was upset and Paul was at the tipi. She explained that he had put a chickpea in his nose. Fortunately I was able to remove it quite easily with a pair of tweezers and it was too big to go very deep no matter what (guess chickpeas were a good choice). Anyway - just to advise that while that book (and maybe others) suggest it, playing with them, particularly at his age where he seems to think that any orifice is an input for any object small enough to fit, I’d avoid “playing beans” as fun as it actually was to play.

We’ve been incessantly playing some new music we got a few weeks ago. You Were Spiraling (Forgive me if that isn’t the URL - I’m in a hammock and am not connected to the net) seems to have the best elements of Ben Folds Five, hints of old Yes and the Cars with inspired lyrics. And yes, fans of the former “Words of the Tyrtle” site, I do think they’re Pauls. We got all three of their CDs for $20 including shipping and have not only been pleased with all three CDs, we’re pleased with all the songs on each of them which is unusual for even our favorite groups.

I think I’ll end it here for now. I’m jonesing for a cup of coffee (I’ve cut down to only two cups a day usually and I’ve only had one today) and I might read a little while I sip my coffee. I can’t say enough how lucky I feel I am right now to have such leisure while at the same time having fairly regular work (that we enjoy doing) to support this lifestyle. I highly recommend a simplifying one’s life to anyone. And maybe it isn’t clear in my writing here but I don’t think that everyone would be happier (or a better person) if they’d just quit their jobs and live in a yurt. More that I think everyone has the ability to simplify their needs a little and that doing so would probably free up time and money in your life. Not that it has been easy here all the time but definitely worthwhile.

It’s only money, right?

Submitted entry: When our $2700 tax refund came we both laughed and said “wow! We’re moguls now!” joking that that much money in our economy made us really wealthy. And it did for about two months during which time we ate out way too much, and took too many trips to Springfield. As of yesterday it’s gone - all but a couple of dollars. Sage feels like we squandered it all. Me, I feel like we squandered some but we also invested in some things that really changed our standard of living - a new solar shower, wireless networking, repairs and insurance for our new car, a hammock, and lots of other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. And also to do lots of web work for free for people and organizations who really needed it. And after all - it’s only money, right.

I think it’s a good thing actually as it’s really getting us off the stick as far as the web design business. That’d be my ideal thing would be to be able to support ourselves 100% through that. The technical writing I do is okay - I do it well enough that it isn’t drudgery and it pays very well though lately I haven’t been getting as many hours in as I’d like. So anyway we’re really focusing now on the web business and trying to get it off the ground with new rates, promotions and some “cold calls” to potential clients. It’s being fun for me too as we’re both spending more time brainstorming and learning all the time. It’s all pretty inspiring if you ask me.

Another pretty hot day today - summer’s definitely here. Last night I was fantasizing about a summer home in somewhere cool - Canada, Antarctica or to just move to the southern hemisphere six months out of the year so our lives went from fall to winter to spring to fall again and just skip summer entirely.

So anyway the day was spent going from the hammock to the platform (our answer to a deck - a big wooden platform in the shade away from the yurt) and to the house where we set up a big tub of water to soak our feet in and for Paul to play in.

Last night was pretty interesting. Lately we’ve been trying slowly to wean Paul both during the day (we keep a basket of nursing “tokens” and reduce the number he starts the day with every once in a while. When the tokens are gone the nursing is over.). At night to help curb night nursing brought on by his being so close to Sage he and I have started sleeping together with Sage on the floor. It’s working well - he nurses once in the night now. Last night I was even able to get him back to sleep without any nursing. He woke up so we went out to pee and he wanted to nurse. Instead I offered to walk around outside with him. He liked that idea but still cried until I told him to listen to the cicadas at which point he listened and fell right asleep. I tried a couple times to go back to bed but no luck - he woke up each time. The third time, though he cuddled closer to me and went back to sleep. Very cool.

Okay - that’s it for now - I have to eat dinner and Sage and I plan to work some tonight after Paul sleeps.

Summer Whining

Submitted entry: It’s 10:15 and already it’s so hot that I can’t even stand wearing a shirt. I doubt I’ll ever get used to Missouri summers. Well, that is unless we find some land next to a big lake or river that we can just sit in from about 11:00 to 5:00. Of course it’s not just Missouri. The summers in Pennsylvania and even some days in Vermont summers were like this. Probably a more accurate way would be to say I’ll never get used to un-air-conditioned summers. Which isn’t even true itself as by the end of last summer we were doing pretty well between being totally sedentary during the hot parts of the day, eating light foods and wiping ourselves down with cool washcloths while sitting in the shade. That and going to town on the worst days. So really I just wanted to complain a little - so sue me.

And while I’m complaining just let me kvetch a little about these mosquitoes this year. We’re still in a drought and are about a foot under the yearly rainfall level but recently got a few good storms - unlike last summer where we hardly got any. As a result there are tons more mosquitoes. Most of the day we’re okay as long as we stay near Sage’s handy mosquito guard that we got from but in the evening they’re joined by other insects that don’t mind the noise the mosquito guard makes. It actually is a pretty cool thing - it makes a high pitched whine that is meant to sound like the male mosquito. Apparently that sound annoys the female mosquito (the one that bites) so they don’t come around. Seems to work too. They say it has a 15 foot radius I’d say more like 10 but it’s very cool.

Today Sage and I are off to town together while Kitey watches Paul. We’re going to pick up the car (had a broken strut if you’re interested). We’re also going to do little shopping. Then Sage is heading home and I’m heading to a client’s house to do some computer literacy training. It’s kind of a cool deal. They’re also a web client and they’re paying for most of their web work with fresh organic produce. We’ve been gorging ourselves on fresh cucumber salads from them. Tomatoes should be coming soon as well so it could be we’re working for gazpacho soon. I’m also picking up some organic beef from them. Not for us as we’re trying to avoid meat again but for the person who did acupuncture on us. Sort of a cascading barter.

The cicadas are almost warmed up to full time/full volume now. They go all night really loudly and are going for much of the day. It’s astonishing how much noise they make. I find them really distracting - hear them for awhile and my brain feels muddled. Add that to the heat and I’m a bit of an idiot in the summer. A friend of ours who grew up in the area actually likes them and sleeps better when they start in. I guess for her they’re kind of a white noise generator. They don’t keep me awake or anything but they’re a constant undercurrent to everything I dream and all my wakings throughout the night.

Today we woke up at 6:30 - Paul wasn’t sleeping in today. And while I don’t normally like waking up that early I think it might be a good thing to start doing. He is napping now while it’s still cool enough to sleep indoors. Not only that we were up for a few hours before it got hot at all so we get that much more comfortable waking time.

And now I think I’ll end it here as I hope to do a bit more writing (non-journal) before Paul wakes up.