That damned house (xposted from FB)

Sometimes I really miss our house. I'm trying to figure out my feelings about it all - do I miss the house? Do I miss the town? Do I miss my friends there?

Well, the answer is: yes. I miss it all, in varying degrees depending on the day. It's hard to start on the path of a Dream (no matter how much I might now philosophically believe that the Dream is a load of BS they sell us to keep the economy going) and to start making a house into a home and then have it all just go away.

That home is where Chris began his first business. That is where some of the amazing wood working he did was completed. There were nights when he would stay up working until midnight, sleep two hours, then go back out to the shop to get it all done in time. Sometimes I'd go out to the shop when there was putzy work I could help him with - sanding, or holding the other end of something to make it easier for him to glue things up.

And that home is where I was when I had my miscarriage. I sat on the old couch we had for a few days just crying and crying. And I can still remember where everything was in the room, where the videos were kept that I watched to help distract my mind from all of those lost dreams.

That town is where we lived when I found out I was pregnant with Morgan. We walked down to the Dairy Queen (we tried really hard to make that a rule - no driving! We had to walk there and back!) and shared a Peanut Buster Parfait and I told Chris we were expecting again.

And the bathroom - I remodeled the bathroom after my miscarriage as a project I could do to feel like I had created something. Granted, I did it on a $50 budget using left over paint that subsequently stained the linoleum and bath tub, but I still was proud of the fact that I did it myself.

And I can still remember how the bathroom smelled in the heat of the summer when I was sooo incredibly wracked with morning sickness, and how the mineral smells in the water made it even worse. Nothing like pregnancy nose, right?

The hardwood floors in the living room that we were so excited to find beneath the carpeting. After living there a year we finally pulled up the carpet and refinished the main level floor. It wasn't perfect, but it was still beautiful and added a richness to the room.

Oh, and the fireplace! We'd light a fire, put on a record (yes, we have a large record collection, and we love to play them as often as we can), and sit back in our armchairs, dreaming about the future. The dogs would curl up by our feet and life was blissful in those moments.

On the topic of records: Cat Stevens' Tea for the Tillerman and Queen's Night at the Opera. Those were the two most played records at that house. Listening to them I can almost hear the fire crackle, feel the cool hardwood beneath my feet, and smell sweet cherry wood burning (benefit of being married to a wood worker - exotic kindling!).

The garden we had the summer after Morgan came. I would go out back and place her on a blanket and spend an hour or so weeding the garden. Once she figured out crawling it took considerably longer to get through a row of plants, with having to go after her ever few minutes! I made a lot of zucchini bread that fall.

My neighbors - I miss them! Cecil and Terri left before Morgan was born, and they were so excited to have a "granddaughter" (they have only sons and grandsons). They used to decorate their yard with a flood of lights every Halloween and Christmas, and I would sometimes just sit on the radiator by the window and watch the lights sparkle. They are kinds souls and immediately took us in as if we were family.

Our other neighbors, Patti and Dean and the kids - I spent a lot of time at Patti's with her daycare, and sometimes just so I could speak to another adult during the day! She was and has been a kind, supportive and welcome shoulder to lean on. Very few people know as much about the harder parts of our lives the past few years than she does.

And, for a while, I FINALLY had the chance to live in the same zip code as Ashlee. That was the first time ever! We had our Thursday get-togethers where I'd go to her house and we'd "work" - before we had kids, we'd sometimes get some office work done between chatting and gossiping, and once the children arrived we'd just run interference for each other while we chatted and gossiped. Well, mostly I'd run interference while she made food that I'd later get to eat. I'm pretty cheap - a pan of pumpkin bread and I'm yours!

In the midst of all the darkness we went through this year, I didn't give myself the chance to celebrate the wonderful times we had in that home we'd made. And we had plans... boy did we ever have plans! Our kitchen was in a state of planning the whole time we lived there :P It would have been amazing if we'd been able to finish it all. But we did what we could with the resources we had, and while we lived there, we had a pretty good time.

We're moving on. We're doing well. We're in a new place, but it's not yet home. It may be, but then again, it may always remain another resting place on the road to a new home. We'll see. I know in my heart that we have the biggest home anyone could ask for - friends and family from coast to coast who have showed us love and generosity when we were down. That much I am grateful for, and I cherish it more than I can say. But I do long for finding that sense of home again. I have my family, but I sometimes still feel lost in the world. I confided in a friend recently that it's difficult to be looking for an object and only be able to recall that it used to reside on the top of a dresser that we no longer own in a home that is no longer ours. It's hard to rest your head when you don't know where home is.

We've set up camp

We did it. We signed a lease on an apartment. For the next year, we'll be living in one place. This is a concept that has not yet fully sunk in. The apartment is nice - for apartments in our budget, we can have two dogs, the manager is friendly, and the location is convenient to needs and friends (who are, in essence, a need).

I think I'm ready to put my head down in one place for a while. The camper was a home of sorts, but not really - it wasn't terribly baby-friendly, the plumbing only worked some of the time, and it was so very tiny that things got tight fast. It was wonderful to stay with friends for a while, but even then we were in and out in other people's territory, in a house that was also under construction.

Now all of our needs (save laundry) are on a single level. We have an oasis that is just ours. We have doors on our rooms, and a bathroom that is all our own. A kitchen with a working sink. No more need to haul water or dishes. These little conveniences really mean a lot after you've lived without.

I'm off to bed soon. I'm going to snuggle in next to my husband and enjoy the feel of being home.

Off the road

Last night we slept indoors.

While our RV was parked in the drive, we slept inside a warm house. Munchie and Wilderheart slept in the guest room on a twin bed, and I slept on the couch in the living room amidst a pride of kitties. And I slept very, very well.

Almost seven months after getting "on the road" we are going to be off for the winter. And five of those months were spent in one location anyway, so there was very little road seen through our front window. In fact, I'd be surprised if we put more than 300 miles on the RV in all that time.

Am I disappointed that our Free & Easy Life didn't turn out as we planned back in March? Of course not. We have had so many plans change and so many unexpected things happen in the past year that I tend to keep my mind and soul open to other possibilities.

We are blessed to have the friends and family that we do. I still ache for the connections I have back in our old home town, and I am sad that it isn't a quick drive to see my parents.

As for our new home? We are very, very blessed to have friends who have lent us a helping hand through this time. We have rebuilt old connections here, and strengthened our relationships with our performing family. It has been an incredible summer - one in which not only Wilderheart and I have grown, but our loved ones around us have grown as well. I am humbled by the kindness and generosity we've encountered.

And our Munchkin - the light of our lives - has grown a great deal, too. She is simply amazing. Motherhood is a tough job, but I can't imagine a more rewarding experience.

I'd write more but my laptop is about to run out of power. I just wanted to get in a quick update on where we are. We are safe. The snow fell on an empty camper last night. Our family is warm, our bellies remain full, and our hearts are overflowing.

Blues

So we have given up on the free camper, I got a chance to go and really look at it. The roof structure is all rotten, it's full of black mold and mice. It needs to be striped to the frame and rebuilt. That is way beyond where we are willing to go.

PLANS:

We had been planning to get another trailer and head south for the winter, sadly money has not been forth coming. I recently hurt my hand, and can barely use it at the moment, so future work is a problem. Dracomama is looking for a writing job so we ca get back on our feet again, that means we will probably be getting an apartment for the winter. The RV just isn't warm enough, or big enough to be snowbound with a toddler and two large dogs. We will probably have a place by Nov, and hopefuly be settling in close to some friends so we can stay social and avoid the winter blues.

THOUGHTS:

So we recently met a road family traveling on the Renaissace festival circuit. We took to them right away, as they were living on the road and had been doing it for years. They were sadly all crammed into a not very large tent, as they had lost the yurt they had been living in. Mom, dad and three kids, pretty cramped, but happy. As we have had time to get to know them and learn their story, our similarities diverged. They are running from problems in their lives, living on cash jobs so that their problems don't catchup with them. None of those are the reasons we want to be on the road, we want to travel and see what's over that hill, experience different climates. Find the piece of land that says "HOME" so we can settle down and build our lives on it! Our lives have tried to change drastically in the last couple months, we went from struggeling to maintain the "American Dream" to trying to free ourselves from it. Now free, we wanted to explore and run free, experience life differently, we found that we are still bound by our need to keep our family safe, have backup plans, money for emergencies. We don't want to find ourselves traveling in a broken down vehicle, living in a crappy tent be cause we have no recourse. We want to be able to buy that land that screams "HOME" when we find it. That means we have to live differently in the system. Work for a couple years, save a nest egg, travel when we can, eventually we will get what we want. I want my familly safe and healthy first and foremost, adventures and travel will come when it can.

Trials and tribulations

So the plumbing in the borrowed RV is fixed, and we are once again self contained!!! We do not however have the title for the new Trailer, and no money to fix it if we did. I think all the people with money went on vacation this month. Work dropped off to nil and we had to use up our savings, back to square one. At this point, we are going to save up the required fix it money, and if the title is not available, we'll buy something ourselves. We appreciate our friends giving us the trailer, but I'm not touching it unless we own it. Needless to say we are frustrated. On the other hand, the borrowed RV is for sale, the owner apparently liked having his yard back. We still want a trailer, as this is a little on the small side for a growing family. Worst case scenario, we can buy this really cheap and resell when we have what we want. We basically have this thing on permanent loan, so I doubt we'll have to goto those lengths.

Patch work

Have we mentioned that our current RV has been without indoor plumbing since late May? No? Well, it has. Whee!

There was a crack in the septic (apparently a previous patch that unpatched itself) and in anticipation of getting the new camper up and running, we just haven't bothered to fix it.

However, after two months of no indoor plumbing - which means walking into our Dear Friends' house e-v-e-r-y time we want to wash a spoon, get water to boil noodles, or use the bathroom - we have given in and decided to patch the septic.

I can almost hear the sound of running water just anticipating this change!

Doing dishes! Washing my hand! Peeing! OH, the simple things in life bring the most joy!!

A note on the safety of our family

We do have a plan. We always have a plan. As much as Wilderheart and I love spontaneity, when it comes to our family's well-being, we thrive on planning.

Unfortunately, in the world of self-employment, paychecks tend to be more... spontaneous. And plans must constantly be rewritten as circumstances change.

We have weathered a great many changes in the past year. Last year this time, Munchkin and I spent a lot of our time weeding our garden, harvesting vegetables and watching traffic pass by out in front of the house. We took family trips to the lake, visited family and friends for summer cook outs, and had a relatively low-stress existence. We could see the dust cloud of uncertainty on the horizon, but I don't think that either of us truly knew how far things would spiral or what tough choices we would be faced with making.

Having just written that, however, I do have to laugh at the concept of "tough choices." Wilderheart and I have never had to chose who would go without dinner so our child could eat. We have never had to chose who will move a thousand miles away for work while the other tries to eek out an existence alone. We have been blessed over and over, and know little of true suffering.

When it comes to the adventure we are currently enjoying, we do have a plan. We have benchmarks and limits and structure to this plan. We will not abandon everything and go willy-nilly off the deep end. Through our great deal of experience having plans go awry, we have B-Z in back-up plans. We put Munchie's welfare first above all and our family's safety second. Our sense of adventure and free-spirited prancing across the countryside is somewhere down on the list, but it would certainly never trump #1 and #2. Ever.

And quite frankly, I would and do take great offense to anyone who would even bring that into question. I am Munchie's Mother. I AM Dracomama. You don't want to see the Dragon come out. It is my privilege to provide her with safety and comfort and entertainment and knowledge. I am blessed to have her in my care.

No decision about our existence will be made without taking Munchie's well-being into account. ABOVE ALL.

New trailer at last.

We get to go clean out the new trailer tomorrow, and start cleaning up in anticipation of the repairs and changes we will be making. The rest depends on how fast the money comes in. Rv parts aren't cheap. I found a good source for scratch and dent new stuff, hopefully that will make the difference. I have up coming job that should make us enough to replace the water and waste systems in the trailer. Then we can move into it, and finish any other improvements as we go.

A sense of home

I've been feeling displaced lately. We moved the remainder of our belongings into the storage unit this weekend. Swept and cleaned the old place, then locked it up and left town.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad about it all. A lot happened this weekend. Unloaded two cars and a house. Rather drastic for a 48-hour span. We visited with friends, which was bitter-sweet. People we love dearly, who we won't be seeing as often as we'd like. People who have drastically impacted our lives for the better, and to whom we owe much gratitude.

I've never been one to really mourn leaving a place, but I suppose most of the time we've left with a firm plan and a place to move up. And now, for the first time, we've moved.. not down, not back, not up, not forward. We've just moved to a whole new reality, really. We parted with SO MUCH "stuff." We pared down to what really mattered, and without those blankets of "stuff" around us, I feel a bit naked sometimes. Not that I need all that stuff, nor do I want to be burdened by it again. It's just so very different. I haven't had this little in so long. I used to be able to move from apartment to apartment in the back of a station wagon, then a van, then a small moving trailer, then a truck, then a semi.... now, with three of us, we're back to only really needing a small U-Haul. It's so very unconventional, yet so very practical.

I am ever-grateful for the friends we have been staying with these past few months. They have offered us security, family, fun, love, comfort, a bathroom ;), and so much more. I doubt I'll ever think of them as anything but my family. We have gained brothers, sisters, nephews, and kittens :)

It's amazing to be going through this process of moving onward. It is not a simple process, but it is a life-altering one, and I think our family is approaching it in the healthiest way we can: together, with integrity and love.

Still here...

Sorry about the long break in posting.
As I posted last we were about to head to Oregon for 2 exciting weeks. The wood working class was very exciting, we learned a great deal. Port Townsend, WA where the school is is as you might guess a port town. There is also a wonderfull boat building school there, which we got to tour. There is a historic fort there, as well as many 1800's buildings, we learned that the hotel we stayed at on the waterfront was known as a seedy brothel in it's hayday. Many a sailor would get drunk there and wakeup at sea to discover they have been shanghai'd to crew some ship or another. We didn't get to explore too fully as we spent most nights designing our projects for class.

After the class we retured to southern Oregon, to Ashland and surrounding area. Our friends live in a quaint sleepy little town called Jacksonville. Which btw is where Bruce Campbell lives! I didn't see him, but I looked!! We toured the area a bit, and set to work building the first of our planned gypsy vardos. Unfortunately things were complicated early on by hard to find materials and shortages. We got plywood ordered, took 2 days to get, we had to order in clear fir for making structure, and we got lucky and found a huge pile of fir brick moulding at a recycling center, which we cut into strips and bent laminated into roofing spars. We tried like hell but we just didn't have the time to get a skin on it. We got the 4 walls framed in ontop of the floor system, and al the roofing spars bent, sanded and cut to length. We ran out of time and energy, we had been working dawn to dusk for 5 days straight. We decided to take a break and enjoy the last 2 days with our friends. We hiked through a beautiful state park full of water falls. One of our friends taught us his waterfall trick. If you stare at a waterfall and let your eyes go out of focus for awhile and the quickly look at a solid object it will jump and quaver. It made the trees all over the hillside look like they were growing before our eyes! Pretty cool trick.
We caught an obscenely early plane, made it home, and then Dracomama and Munchie were on a plane 3 days later to Alaska to visit Dracomama's sister for a week. That was a long week for both of us.

We are all home together now, obviously more has transpired since then but non of it was notable. We still haven't gotten into our new trailer, it took forever to get my last payment from the Rogers house I was working on. We just got it last week! *Indignant* I lucked out and got a great deal on a truck that needed a tiny bit of work on, the guy was selling because he thought it needed new fuel injectors, what it really needed was a tuneup. So plugs and wires and $1000.00 off the price. Just like to mention, somebody else told him it needed injectors not me! We can finally go get our trailer sometime in the next week. I have some other projects to finish up before I can start fixing on it, but just havin it will be a step in the right direction.

As for living situations, well we are not quite as self contained as we would like anymore. The waste tank has a crack in it. Made things interesting when I went to the dumpstation. Lets just say the trail I was leaving wasn't bread crumbs. So needless to say we no longer have running water and we can't use our bathroom in the middle of the night. We are still parked with the Cottage crew, they are moved in. We use their facilities for everything now, we can't cook without running inside for water or to do dishes. Having a real shower and toilet is nice but not convenient to our home. We are debating what to do for the winter, I think we both want to head away from the cottage crew as this situation wold not be feasible in the cold and snow. I might look into an RV park that would allow winter guests, people wrap their trailers and rv's in styrofoam and have LP delivered. We are also thinking of getting a 6 mo lease at an apt somewhere on the west end of the cities, we like it over here. It all depends on work really, if I can stay busy all winter long an apt would be doable. We really want to head down to New Mexico for xmas with Dracomama's brother, and stay for the worst of the MN winter in the southwest. I could probably find work there as well as here, business cards are cheap and tools would come with us in the back of the truck.
I'll keep you informed as we get our new trailer and get it livable. We'll see what the end of summer brings.

Travel Fever

Not too much new going on, still working on the rogers house. Though I will be starting a new one soon. We leave for our trip to Oregon in a weeks time, we will be flying and staying with friends. I am very excited as I will be spending a week at a wood working school in northern washington learning to build gypsy vardos. Then south to Oregon for a week to build a couple vardos with friends. Draomama and Munchie will be staying in southern Oregon with friends the whole time. The dogs will be staying at the kennel while we are away, they seem to like it there. They bunk together, and get to play with other dogs. 

Meanwhile, the friends we are staying with, I'll call them the cottage crew, all have the flu. We have so far avoided it. Probably helps that they haven't moved in here full time yet, and we have our own kitchen in the camper. Their little boy had a 103 fever the other day, and they took him to the hospital. He is doing better now and is home, but the rest of the family is suffering along with him. At least they are getting it out of the way all at once, instead of swapping it back and forth for weeks. This does of course delay their move-in and therefore our getting our new camper. We are still hoping to get it in June so we can get it ready to live in before the heat of the summer. The AC works in our current camper, but we will be putting in a brand new unit into the new trailer. Our borrowed camper is old and I don't trust the ac unit to work all summer. Being hot at night is one thing, but trying to get a hot restless toddler to sleep in the heat is another.

I will try and post some pictures soon, of our current parking spot and of munchie at play. Until next time.

Severing Ties

We are back at our house this weekend, bringing the last few things to storage. We left before all was done because I had work available, and we were itching for adventure. Sadly our home of the past four years has become a chore and a issue we have to deal with. It is no longer home, but a place we were tied to. We will probably be back to finish cleaning it up for the next person who dwells here, we don't want to be thought of as filthy people. Honestly though with our possessions gone and our little house in the big world waiting for us, I don't care if we come back or not. Ultimately I pity our house as it will be joining the ranks of houses vacant and untended. Some houses never come back from such a thing, though ours has good bones so hopefully the next family finds her in good order as we left her. 

Enough about the old house, we have been planning what to do with our new trailer. We have yet to take possession of it, but planning never hurts. We want to remodel the interior as it needs work anyway. We will be adding a roof top air conditioning unit, a new furnace, new water and waste tanks, and new lighting. I plan on doing some woodwork inside as well, Walnut where I can afford to.  There has been talk of putting in one of those floating laminate wood floors, which should be easy to install. We want to make it as vardo like as possible. For those outside the loop, a vardo is a gypsy wagon. The outside will get a paint job if we have enough cash at the end. I will post pictures once we get over to the camper again.

TGISpring

It's been a little while since my last post. The job is going well, cleaning up so all the changes start looking good. Have a few more things to tackle, should be pretty close to done by the end of next week.

We are going to shift locations next week also, we'll be moving our little house in the big world to stay with some friends at their new abode. Change of scenery will be nice. Big news! Our friends that are letting us boondock are giving us their travel trailer. It's 10 feet longer than our current home, such space, Drool! They are using it for storage at the moment, but will be moving into their new home soon. Then we'll have to renovate the interior, there is some minor water damage, and it is severely dated. A little custom wood working and some new light fixtures and we have our new gypsy home. We have accidentally begun calling it "The Vardo". On the outside it's a trailer, inside...Gypsy Paradise. Hopefully all the moving goes well, and by the time we get back from our trip to Oregon, we should be working on our new home, and living in it by early June.

Snow crazy

It's been a long crazy two weeks. I was shunted off my project to a new one farther away. Unfortunately we couldn't bring the camper so Dracomama and Munchie had to stay behind. The job itself went pretty well, but in the middle of it, I got a miserable stomach bug and it snowed like 5 times. 

     On the upside the guy who loaned us the camper bought a new furnace for us. I just need a spare min to install it and we are good to go.

     I figure I have another week or so on this house and then I will be looking at several projects down in the cities. It will be nice to get to a site with running water! We have a water tank, but it's only 15 to 20 gallons and it goes away fast. We have learned to ration water and dump our grey water rather than let it go into the holding tank. It will be nice to have full hookups sometime, as we have never had the luxury. But parks are expensive $300 to $500 per month. I know cheap compared to an apartment or mortgage, still taps the savings.

Munchie in her Little House in the Big World

Here's our Munchkin playing with her dolls and having a grand old time:

[video link]

Sorry for the link - been having trouble uploading to Blogger!

Looking back, moving forward

Every time you move on to something new, you leave something else behind. 

We have had to leave behind friends, family and community to move on to this new lifestyle. It's been hard, and I don't think I've been really letting myself think about it much in an effort to not feel sad. I should just let go. But.. it's hard. I'm trying so hard to make sure we succeed that the thought of letting go emotionally frightens me. Which is probably why my back is currently a Guide to Knots of the Seven Seas :P

There are three ladies back home with whom I was particularly close. I already miss them  tremendously. I still feel them present in my life, but it's not the same, and won't likely ever be the same again. And part of me feels like I missed some opportunities to do more with my friends while I was there. They all (I'm assuming grudgingly) have helped launch us on this journey. Having been on the left-behind end of things before, I know that's not easy. And I thank them all for everything they have done for us - every bit of love they have shared.

Then, there is the other side of the coin. We have moved to an area where we have a lot of friends. We've been able to get together with several of them already and share meals, take advantage of showers (praise the Lord!), and reconnect. It's been a joy "showing off" Munchie to all of our friends. Really, she is the light of our lives and it is wonderful that she gets to spend time with all these other Aunties and Uncles. 

Wilderheart and I are blessed to have friends from one end of this state to the other (really, I think we have friends in both Moorehead and Albert Lea....), and humbled by the support and love that everyone has shown us during this transition. It's hard for us - we're boot-strap kind of people, and so we can get stubbornly determined to do it on our own. But there is no way - NO way - we could have done all of this without at least a dozen of our friends having pitched in to lend a hand or a shoulder along the way.

So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you!!

Spring, is that you?

What a roller-coaster week of weather! Cold, strong winds, snow, sleet, rain, low clouds. I could almost hear the geese cursing as they flew overhead.

We managed to resolve our heating issues, so at least we could stay warm in our Little House in the Big World. And we have exactly the right number of pans and buckets to catch the drips from the rain! Yes, our roof leaks. Something to see to once it warms up enough for sealant to properly cure. This is a borrowed RV, so I'm not about to complain! Free rent is free rent, so putting some equity into the RV is the least we can do.

It's been hard not to go looking to see what else is for sale out there. We don't have money pooled together yet to buy our own RV, and we're still flip-flopping between tow-behind and RV, but it's just so darned tempting to check Craigslist or poke our noses in at a used camper dealer.

We do know one thing: we want a home with bigger tanks. We have a 15-gallon potable water tank, and a combo grey and black water tank. We've been trying to tap our resources sparingly. We don't put any grey-water down the drain if we can avoid it - I do dishes in two tubs and toss the water in the grassy field by the house when I'm done. It adds an extra step, but at least we don't have to drive to the RV dump site every other day!

Wilderheart has been working at another job site for the past week - the realtor we're working with pulled him off his main project to get another home ready for listing right away. He should be finishing up on that site today, then returning to working right outside my door. I do really miss him when he's away, but the reality is that without our move into the LHitBW, I'd be missing him for weeks at a time. This way, we still get to be together as a family in the evenings. It's been a blessing!

We are midway through our second week, the project we are camped at has been put on hold as other projects take more precedence over this one. Which means I have to leave every day and Dracomama and Munchie are cooped up and stir crazy when I get home. On the bright side some good friends of ours live near by and have invited us to camp out in their yard. The wife stays home with their child, and dracomama and munchie would each have daytime cohorts. Hoping the cold weather will stay away!

Sunday morning silence

Munchie and Papa have gone off to the store for supplies, so I am left here alone in our Little House in the Big World. After living here for almost a week, I was able to reorganize some items to make it a little easier to function. I put away the laundry, re-made the bed with the extra blankets we picked up from the house yesterday, folded up the blankets we borrowed from Munchie's God-Papa (thank Heaven for those blankets!), and put away the clean dishes. Then I went through every cupboard and made sure that the items in those cupboards actually belonged there. 

Now I'm sitting here, alone (The Mutts - who we have been remiss in introducing until now* - are stowed away in the garage of the house for the moment so I could clean), listening to the spring winds blow in, occasionally accompanied by the trill of a meadowlark or punctured by a passing flight of killdeer. 

The house we are fixing up is parked in the middle of a field/marsh area that, at one time, was a horse farm. It is obvious that the house - built in the 1970s, was built to be state-of-the-art at the time, but never, ever updated.

Never.

On the bright side, where there is wall paper, there is only one layer. The woodwork hasn't been painted over a dozen times. It's a rather WYSIWYG home. 

The land around it was sold off, maybe 5-10 years ago, and some McMansions sprung up. Fortunately, the lots are a reasonable size, and this house remains on a fairly nice chunk of land itself. 

It's very peaceful here, and I'm glad that this was our first stop on our new journey. It's been a fairly low-key, yet challenging enough start to keep things real for us (Have I mentioned that the house isn't hooked up to city water yet, but has its well capped? Yeah, so we have to drive to town to refill our water tanks.. kind of a pain...). Yesterday we checked out a nearby RV Park to see if we wanted to live there and have Wilderheart commute the few miles to the house every day. 

We decided - firmly - against it. 

First of all, the reason we're in an RV and not in an apartment or on a friend's couch is so we can keep the family together. Second, the park was far away from town with no easy access - unless I wanted to ride my bike along a highway. And if Chris needed the car to get to work, we'd be stuck. Finally, I had a bad feeling about the place. That is always enough reason for me to stay out of a place. 

Well, since I started this post, my two great loves have rejoined me, and I've been feasting on coffee and doughnuts with Papa while he helped Munchie eat some yogurt and crackers. Oh, what a life!

*We will post about our other two great loves soon!

Ground hog's day...Ground hog's day...Ground hog's day...

Ahh what a week we had trying to escape our home town. We had planned on staying in the rv for a couple nights to get used to it before we left. The furnace heated things nicely, the leaks were fixed (mostly) half of our road gear was packed. I decided to go get propane as it was low, and maybe wash some dirt off as it was pretty dirty from sitting for so long. At fleet supply they told me they couldn't fill rv's, only portable cylinders.  No problem, I would just head across town, but first I would stop and use the truck wash. I put in my $3.00 in quarters the pressure washer sprang to life and then coughed and died. It pissed water for the entire duration of the clock. There are no attendants and no numbers to call for help, so I cursed and left with a wet, dirty rv. Filled her up with propane, went home and I decided I didn't like the soot stain by the furnace exhaust. The furnace had been sitting in the back of my mind for a couple days. It lit fine and heated nice. The CO detectors were ok with everything, but I had an itch. So I called the local rv dealer and begged them to do an inspection and maybe a cleaning. Bad news, the furnace was filthy and burning poorly for starters. We also discovered that the main burner gas valve was defective and deemed a safety hazard by the manufacturer. It wasn't available for replacement, or even legal to put in if we could find it. Long story short we had to delay over the weekend our departure, and pay $160.00 to have the furnace taken out and put in a cardboard box in pieces. No Heat! I found 2 nice heaters at fleet farm, figured they would do the job nicely. Turns out we can only run one at a time because they blow the breaker where ever we are plugged in. I want a 30 amp hookup!!! On the up side I discovered that my halogen work light puts off enough heat to keep the water from freezing up. BONUS! 

Leaving day at last, all our stuff is packed. Myself and the dogs in the rv and Dracomama and Munchie in the car following. The engine makes a squealing noise if I try to go over 50 mph, I pullover and determine that it is the belts. I think if I drive easy we can probably make it to our destination 60 miles away. We make it 10 miles and stop at a gas station as the squealing is unbearable, and still can't get over 50 mph. I break out the tools and get one set of belts tight, but I break my rachet trying to get power steering adjuster loose. I also crush a finger breaking the nail so it's pushed into the nailbed, Yay! I hope the one adjustment is enough, go wash up and come back out to talk to Dracomama and notice the engine of the car smoking. I look at the dash, temp is redlined! I ask her to shut the engine off and pop the hood. Coolant vomiting everywhere! Great! We all pile into the squealing camper and return home. I take the spare car and run 30 miles to get parts and the electric heaters I spoke of. On the way back I stop and put a new thermostat in the broken car. Then go home and lay on the shoulder under the rv and change belts. The adjuster for the power steering is useless, so I have to pry the belt off. The others came off fine but I discover that the weenie at the parts store has given me one wrong sized belt. I put on what I can put on. I put the old power steering belt back on as the new one is too tight. We camp out in the rv as that is where all our stuff is. heater works ok, but this is where we kept blowing breakers. Frustrating!  We head out the next day and only make it a mile. it becomes obvious that the culprit is the power steering belt I can't adjust. Laying on a dirt road I used strong vocabulary, my german stubbornness, and some ninja like reflexes to get the belt onto the pulley. We then pick up the repaired car and made it to our destination.

We are on the road... finally!

I will let Wilderheart get around to updating everyone on the adventures of the last five days, and the Groundhog's Day-effect that took place as we tried to leave town.

This morning we woke up after our first full night's sleep in our new location. It was a bit chilly - it's only 28'F outside the camper, and while it was 62'F inside when we first awoke, it dropped down to 58'F due to the fact that we can't run the heater and the coffee pot at the same time. We will have to resolve this issue!

Life in our Little House in the Big World has thus far been rather lovely. We rolled in here at about 3pm on St. Patrick's Day, and the first thing Munchie did when she stepped outside was bolt around giggling and exploring the various leaves and twigs and dirt clods. We pulled out her umbrella stroller and got the dogs on their leashes, and we went for a family walk. Munchie spent half the time just giggling at the two waddle-butts waggling in front of her (if I was at that height, I'd probably laugh at dog butts, too).

After our walk, Munchie and I ran to do some quick shopping for Wilderheart, which included a celebratory 4-pack of Guinness, since after all the chaos of getting here, we wouldn't be able to go out and celebrate. I bought some groceries and some Baby Chow and we went back to the camper.

Munchie and her Papa cooked chicken together on our mini-grill outside:



...while I quickly vacuumed inside and cooked some Mexican rice. Then we all sat down together for our meal. Okay, W.H. and I sat down - Munchie squirmed and wriggled and wandered. We need to get her portable booster high-chair back so we can keep working on those table manners!

Munchie asking for "more"

And our favorite - her turtle face:

Then I told W.H. to take the night off - he'd been running so hard for the past few days that I thought he deserved a rest. Munchie went to bed around 8pm (I think the fresh air really helped!) and W.H. and I sat at the table and watched two episodes of Battlestar Galactica before turning in for the night.

Certainly not the most wild St. Patrick's Day we've ever shared, but definitely one of the best!

The RV

We put out a call to the many faire friends and others that we know for the renting or borrowing of an rv or trailer. We were surprised by getting several immediate offers. The one we took was for an rv approx 24 feet with a rear tent pop out much like those little pop up trailers. It's from 1976, so it's well loved, but everything more or less works. The problems being that it was well loved by mice and water. I patched up the leaky skylight, and my lovely wife and I took turns cleaning up the mouse presents. We steam cleaned and washed everything. I stripped the cushions from the cab-over where we are going to sleep, and soaked them in the tub with detergent and bleach. They are now nice and clean and 4 days later still wet. I took them to the laundromat and stuffed them into huge dryers and $10 later, still wet. The steam cleaner was able to suck moisture from them but I couldn't drag the wand over them, you had to stab it into the cushion and hold it there. This also has the added bonus of making both he inside and the outside wet. So now they are draped over radiators all over the house. My other half has been making new curtains to replace the worn ones that came with the camper, and seat covers to render the interior somewhat modern. Sitting in the camper after all the work feels pretty good, it's homey which of course is a good thing. We can't wait to move our stuff in and move out of the house. The house still has alot of detrius floating around, I think it might be easier to deal with if we aren't cohabitating with our junk.

Garage sale fever

There were people sitting in their cars waiting for us to open up on saturday. They came crowding in and bought piles of stuff.  We had a very busy day. Today, being sunday was slower, I actually got out to the rv to do some repairs (will post about that later) between customers. We had a few pangs watching people haggle over our belongings and cart them away in their self satisfied "I just got a deal" sort of way. But we managed to make a fair amount of money in the process. I highly recommend to every young family starting out, that once you get to that point (and you'll know) sell everything, its liberating! We obviously kept our keepsakes and treasures, some useful things for our next place. More later

Tired. Just... tired.

I can actually feel myself getting meaner as the night wears on. We are so close to our big sale. There is a lot left to do, but we have come so, so far. We have touched nearly everything in the house. That's a lot of touching, and a lot of reliving memories (or, searching for memories, as the case may be!).

I can hardly write. In fact, I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. I'm just TIRED!

No rest for the weary.

We are finding ourselves quite weary these days both mentally and physically. Tonight marked the final destruction of the attic, where everything we didn't want to deal with in the past was placed. Again with the hand down the ladder, move to the landing and carry the rest of the way down. Sorting is almost as heavy, there comes a point where items you once prized as useful or interesting become an annoying thing you have to dispose of. Living day to day, you don't really think about how much we accumulate living in a house. When you finally move stuff seems to multiply out of the closets and storage areas like so many demonic rabbit hoards. We will both be glad to have this part over.

Where is God in our blog?

One thing we did notice about other blogs written by families shaking off the harness of materialism and heading out on the road is that many of them have a very strong, passionate relationship with Christ, and talk of this in their blogs.

Wilderheart and I are not those people (edited to add: we are not those people that talk a lot about our faith! Hehe - after a re-read, I realized how that phrasing sounded...). He is Pagan. I am Catholic. We have a blessed and loving marriage. We believe that the Divine works through us if we pause long enough to listen. We feel that we are on the path that was set out for us, and that we will arrive at greater spiritual awareness because we are listening to the Divine in this venture.

While we are both strong in our faith, we are also quiet in our faith. Should the Divine ever lead us to be otherwise, we'll let you know. But until then, we will continue to quietly develop our relationships with the Creator as a family.

Cardio and weights

Tonight we tackled the attic. Wilderheart handed things down, I caught them below and stacked them, and Munchkin (our 14-month-old) stood barricaded in the bedroom watching with intense interest.

After we had a substantial pile, I then carried boxes to the landing and Wilderheart carried them the rest of the way down. This process went a lot faster, and resulted in both of us wheezing and heaving. I have knots all up and down my back, bruises in place I didn't know could bruise, and an overwhelming urge to drool on myself at the end of the day. We are certainly paying for our sin of materialism!

We emptied many, many boxes - some items were combined into other boxes, some items thrown out, and even more landed in the sell/donate piles. I really am dreading pricing all of these things, but hopefully the sale will prove fruitful and we'll 1. have more money when it's over and 2. have less stuff when it's over!

Oh, and on a side note about that open-house sale: I posted a listing for it in the paper today. We "won" two free garage sale yard signs for being the first of the season :) hehe!

Doing without, growing within

Today has been quite the blitz day! Wilderheart sorted and packed the kitchen items, keeping in mind that most cooking will be done in a tiny space with a small stove. When he made lunch, he even made sure to use a recipe that would be good for on-the-road cooking. We're making this transition as thoughtfully as we can.

As a matter of fact, we have now been living without running water for over a week. Our water was turned off last Monday. In the midst of everything else, we simply forgot that our payment was due that day. The fee to turn water back on would be an additional $70. We chose to leave the water off. The first night (we got home around 9pm to find the water off), Wilderheart scooped up buckets of snow to melt on the radiators overnight. We bought some drinking water, and made plans to haul water from another source.

Thankfully, our neighbor - who has been having ups and downs right along with us - saw our water being turned off and called us to let us know that we could get water (and showers!) at their house. That has simplified things a lot, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have that family in our lives (we WILL be taking them with us on the road - in spirit if not in body).

What are the things we have to give up without running water? We don't flush the toilets as often. We have to take our laundry elsewhere to wash. We don't get to wash our hands as often, but we have antibacterial gel and baby wipes. I don't get to take bath on a whim (which is one of my great weaknesses in winter - I could live in the bath tub!). When Wilderheart needs to do dishes, he just hauls water back from their home hot (why is he doing dishes? because the kitchen is His Domain).

But things weren't instantly this easy for us. The moment that we discovered our water was turned off, Wilderheart became quite agitated. He paced around the house almost like he was looking for something that he'd lost. Finally, he calmed down and admitted that he was more upset that the choice was taken out of our hands (not really - we COULD have chosen to have the water turned back on, but having it turned off in the first place wasn't our choice).

After the first couple of days, we adjusted to the new lifestyle. It really hasn't been that hard. We will likely be living without running water in the RV until the weather improves and we don't have to worry about anything freezing overnight (hopefully by April!). However, we should be able to get water and indoor plumbing at the houses that Wilderheart is fixing, so that will make things easier, too.

Wildeheart just announced that dinner is ready. I'm going to go join my family for a meal, and make the next list of things to do before we can leave.

Sorting our lives into boxes

We have decided to make a hasty (yet well-planned) exit from this home for a few important reasons:

1. Wilderheart's new job is starting soon, and we want to keep the family together as much as possible.
2. The fate of our home is unknown at this point, except that one way or another it won't be ours in a few months. We have no reason to cling to it. In our hearts, it is no longer ours.
3. It's been a long winter and we figured that turning our lives inside out and disposing of 3/4 of our belongings would break up the tedium.

We had a one week mad dash to store, donate, sell or trash everything we own. Well, we made it about 50% of the way on that, but Wilderheart's start date was moved back a week, so we also have an extra week to make things happen.

We have a storage unit here in town so we don't have to drive far. Since we'll be mobile for the next several months, we figured that this was as good a place to store things as any. And we aren't storing a whole lot. The only pieces of furniture we are keeping are an antique dresser and Morgan's crib. Everything else we have has been handed down to us or purchased second-hand. We don't have any strong attachments to any of it.

Clothes? Not a problem, either. Books? Somewhat more difficult, but we promised each other we'd buy a Kindle as soon as we can save for one so we can carry a library on the road with us. Books that really mean a lot will go in the storage unit.

The real difficult items to sort are those dozen or so boxes of odds and ends that we have kept through out our lives to remind us of moments in our past, like a box full of bookmarks that refer back to a chapter we may want to revisit some day. The space shuttle pencil sharpener from my visit to Orlando at age six. The hedgehog dog toy we took photos of against the backdrop of various tourist attractions on our trip to New Mexico. The keychain from my senior prom.

Those are the little treasures with which I cannot bring myself to part. They don't take up much space, but some day, after a lot of living and a lot of travel, my children will ask me about my past. Those bookmarks will come in handy.

The journey begins

We are family comprised of 2 adults one toddler and 2 large dogs. Due to poor location and the down economy we are losing/giving up our house. We have acquired through a generous friend the free use of an RV for our little family to travel from place to place while I work. I currently am a jack of all trades and master of a few. I am using my many talents to repair (Ironically) foreclosed homes for banks. I invite you therefore to follow along with our family's adventures.