Mississippi Miracles

On Monday, after a weekend of unpacking and being in the house, K. and I were ready to start off the New Year with a little.. adventure.

Being nosy non-drinking types, we headed to Sardis Lake, a lake north of Oxford that apparently everyone and his brother goes waterskiing on.

Lakes are different down here. They're manmade for sport. Because of cottonmouths and other water nasties, ppl don't really go swimming in them. Although thank heaven we're too far north for alligators.

But a lake is a lake, and so we drove to it. I had my nose in a book, planning our San Fransisco vacation, and so when K. broke into laughter and slowed the truck, it took me a second to look up.

He was laughing at the lake. Or rather, the absence of one.

Sardis lake, boat ramps, signs, picnic tables and all, consisted of a vast sea of...mud. Dotted with dead standing trees and occasional glimpses of flat blue water. It looked like an alien landscape under the big blue sky.

"Maybe we're on the wrong side," said I.

"There's a road," said he, pointing to a gravel road that streaked through the mud.

Being in our Tundra, the dogs in the back, we elected to take the road.

And we crawled along appily enough for a full five minutes, until we reached a dip that was filled with shimmering blue water. The earth, cracked and fissured, looked sturdy enough to go around said dip.

So we did, and promptly, despite me bouncing in the back, despite K. sinking in the deceptively soft mud to get pieces of wood for the tires, despite our kick-ass four wheel drive, we got stuck.

The air was very cold and clean, the sky very blue, and we were marooned in the middle of this vast mudpit. I laughed, and luaghed, and laughed. And bless his heart, K., inches of clay stuck to his new sneakers, laughed too.

Then I spotted them on the horizon. Four-wheelers. They spotted us, and within moments, we were surrounded with eight four-wheelers laden with big men and boy-men, all decked out in camo, with two dogs accompanying them.

"Why didn't you stay on the road?" The biggest one asked.

"It's full of water," K. said, and I nodded my Virginian head.

"Lined with concrete," the man said. He held his hands about a foot and a half apart. "Ain't but that deep anyway."

We felt very dumb, and even dumber a minute later when we asked where the hell the lake was anyway.

"They drain it every winter," another man said. His boy-child said, "we just come out here to play."

Three of the fourwheelers winched and towed us out within minutes, while another boy-child stared in the windows at me, snapping madly away, and Shadow and Dido. "You have two fat dogs," he said, and though I smiled, that's just not true.

When we were back on the road, the four-wheelers wheeling around us like mechanical herding dogs, we gave them our sincere thanks.

"Welcome to Mississippi," the boss one said, and then they streaked away.

We ended up driving on and letting the girls play. Despite the mud, it was a better beginning to a new year than I could have dreamed up.

a bone

I'M AT THE DAMN LIBRARY.

pictures tomorrow, I promise, I swear.

In other news: I finally found a good eyebrow waxer. I'm reading the Dalai Lama's "Art of Happiness" like the good little yuppie I am-- and I like it. I'm trying to train the dogs to a-- stay off the couch/armchair and b--do the invisible fence thing. Which so far means that they're pretty much afraid to go outside. But we're only in day two, and according to my manual, this is normal. I'm working on a few short projects before revising the novel, and all is going well. I fried the motherboard on my laptop, though, which apparently costs nearly what I paid for the darn thing three years ago, so we're not getting it fixed. I'm waiting for K's battered laptop (cabin-building in VT took a toll) to die, and then I'm going to pressure him into getting us a desktop that we share for internet/word processing.

IN THE MEAN TIME, I love my new system. Two binders. One for random stuff, one for writing. Here's what I love about it: no commitment. I can write whatever wherever, and then ORGANIZE IT because the paper has HOLES. I LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT. And unlike the darn laptop, binders are truly portable. AndI get to feel productive typing it all up later. The catch about being self-employed is that so far, there's little built-in busy work, so I'm actually happy for the mindless addition to my routine.

I have a great story, but I want to save it for tomorrow so pics can accompany it. So check back tomorrow, peeps.

Happy New Year!

We've driven 1700 miles and moved to our new house. But, alas, the internet doesn't get turned on until Thursday.

Blogging will resume and pictures will follow.

Oh Tannenbaum

At 5.05 tonight, we're driving northeast for the holidays. I've got the presents packed, the pooches ready, the luggage together, and now, per my sweetie's request, I'm posting pictures of our very first Christmas tree (we didn't have one last year).

This tree was stolen from the side of the road in the dark. It's decorated with cranberries, handstrung by moi, silver-frosted pinecones, K-baked gingerbread cut-outs, and candycanes. We're very proud of it.

Merry Christmas everyone! Traveling mercies and much love to all.

vacay

I finished drafting my novel today.

Now, there's a heck of a lot of re-working and revising to do, but there's a manuscript to do it with.

Have a very merry Christmas.

here comes the sun

The funk hath lifted-- maybe because it just left, maybe because I got to turn down another job yesterday (apparently, I don't have to be a secretary), but probably because K. surprised me by coming home for lunch because he's the best husband ever. And we cleaned the house.

In other news, I'm wildly excited about the small Victorian we're moving to come New Years. It's not quite definite yet-- but I'd be surprised if it fell through. A proper yard (albeit not fenced), three porches, beautiful tall windows and ceilings, shiny wooden floors, funky old cabinets, and all in a quieter town 20 minutes from Oxford, two blocks from downtown, and on a peaceful side street. For a paltry amount of rent and a month-to-month lease, so we can move out the minute we find our farm.

The bad-- well, the yard ain't fenced. There's no garage for sweetie's workshop, the bathrooms are far from my ideal, and the guest room's gonna be quite small. Plus I don't think there's a washer/dryer.

But you know what? It's super-nice anyway. Everyone, visit come spring. I CAN'T WAIT. In this one, we're going to hang pictures and unpack our boxes. Myabe I'll even get a proper desk rather than boards on sawhorses with an old stool that's broken for a chair. Here's hoping.

I love y'all. Thanks for reading.

mental health days

K. and I had an illuminating conversation recently. While not strictly accurate, it went something like this:

Him: I'm really impressed you get up early every day. And that you're writing every day.

Me: I have to or I feel guilty.

Him: You write because of guilt?

Me: Yes. (Pause.) In fact, everything I do is because of guilt. Cleaning the house, walking the dogs, exercising. (Pause.) Without guilt I'd stay in bed all day reading trashy books and eating. (Pause.) Don't you feel guilty when you don't do things?

Him: No.

Heh. I don't think this is a difference between the sexes, but it's made me realize how many things I do to quiet the shrill anxious voice inside of me. And so on days like today, when it's raining, when we didn't go to church on Sunday, when the house is untidy, my purse is crammed full of papers, and the laundry's sitting in the dryer, when we haven't dealt with our Christmas cards and my writing for the day has not been finished, that voice is just plain alarming.

Good thing tonight's cleaning night. That ought to shut it up.

Hope

Lately, an unfamiliar feeling has been lapping gently at my feet when I listen to NPR during dinner preparations.

Hope.

Something has shifted since the November elections, where the balance of the House and the Senate shifted so drastically. Good news is seemingly falling from the sky.

An area the size of Alabama set aside for permanent conservation in Brazil (a country which I'm growing to admire, considering that 40% of their fuel consumption is from sugar ethanol).

GM motors giving up the carburetor ghost to the Japanese and increasing their exploration into electric cars.

A supermodel pioneering eco-fashion, where the fabrics are organic and non-sweatshop.

Justice Scalia deeming carbon as a pollutant in the case of Massachussetts versus the EPA, where Mass. is demanding the the EPA regulate carbon emissions.

And finally, Victoria's Secret, after years of attack by a certain non-profit group whom I can't remember, agreeing to incorporate ten percent of recycled paper into the catalogs, with aims to increase that number and to avoid using paper made from threatened areas of forest.

I don't want to jinx it, but man, it's nice to feel the tide finally turning.

hoves, ankles, and a merry christmas to all

heh. Who knew about cache clearing?

Yesterday was a mixed bag of chips, as my inner Anglophile says, ranging between a really pleasant walk with the dogs over at Thacker Mountain (as opposed to Friday, where I fell down a 90 degree slope trying to get to Shadow and wound up with hives on my face), then a fairly productive work day (novel and four dry-as-a-bone public health papers), topped off by a fascinating public hearing about a proposed historic district. Then the evening: a Christmas parade and K.'s weekly company basketball game.

He's still sleeping. That's not unusual; the swollen ankle propped on a pillow is. Thank heaven this other boy had had the same experience and swore up and down it's a sprain, not a break-- and he can move/walk on it a bit-- but woo, a nasty sprain tis.

In other news, I'm calling people up looking for a spring rental that won't make me want to pull my hair out, has a guest room, and a better yard for the dogs. Cross your fingers.

I've declared it to be a Christmas weekend this weekend. The Christmas cards will be assembled and addressed, our VERY FIRST TREE will get put up, and who knows, maybe we'll even go nuts and get a Christmas CD. We're too cheap to buy decorations for the tree though, so pine cones-- which we may or may not lightly frost with silver-- and strung cranberries twill be. Last year we tried to make strings of popcorn and cranberries for our fireplace, and the popcorn is just too wiley for me.

So that's what's going on. Not a bad way to be, although I'm hoping the 6'6'' boy over yonder will be able to get around with some degree of comfort. If not, well-- I've got strong shoulders.

perhaps this'll post

I feel as if there's a vacation that no one has told me about.

No one has posted since November 29th, including the two celebrity gossip columns I check daily, despite the fact that there's been gossip to post about.

And blogger is behaving oddly, allowing my last post to be seen on some cumputers and not on others. 3 comments are invisible.

It's a strange world.

And a strange weekend, come to think of it. We spent last night being nauseous with envy at A and A's tinroofed, bead-boarded farmhouse complete with three beauteous dogs and a pond. I even dreamed about it.

This morning, K. and I attended the Methodist church 5 miles outside of Oxford. He dropped all the cash we had in the collection plate (checking with me first), and after we watched our bills sail away, he whispered "Maybe God will find us a farmhouse now."

Bribing God. Luckily, she'll know that we don't really mean it.

apologies all around

aight people. Sorry for being moody. I'm madly at work on the novel, have to make minestrone and deliver for husband's lunch, and am filling out an application for a pretty sweet gig which I hope I get.

More later.

my dear readers

Fine, NO ONE COMMENT. I don't care at all. I ONLY work and SLAVE my fingers to the bone navigating my mentally ill computer and the new beta blogger to give Y'ALL REGULAR UPDATES and lots of SUPER pretty pictures.

if anyone has a farm for sale or some available cookies, you can call me. Otherwise, I'm sulking.

Saturday in Mississippi

While the lack of a farm seems to be killing us slowly, all other things proceed well. This weekend, we drove out to Pontotoc, Mississippi, where 14 Amish families, mostly young with a ton of kids, migrated from Ohio. Here are some pictures. I would have loved to catch a picture of the girls sitting on a bench, all in bonnets and blue dresses with smiles on their faces, but that felt a wee bit exploitive. I'm in love with the gourds hung for birdhouses. So stark and beautiful.

However, we now have Amish questions. Like, how come they don't have power but they do have generators to power machines? How on earth do you move from Ohio with buggies, children, and livestock these days? Did they get the tin for their roof delivered or do they pick it up in a wagon?

Any answers are appreciated.

the dern townhouse

So, for those of my family member who alternately wonder what we're living in or why they can't visit us until we find our farmhouse:

A townhouse, or as I call it, the dollhouse. Please make googly eyes at my new table and the be-utiful pink roses my husband brought home the day I was flying around making Italian food for dinner guests. Also note the uber-cool horse trailer in which we hauled our possessions down south.

In other news:

I've updated the links section. Check out bluepoppy and my best friend stinkie.

anyone know an agent?

Dear sweet Lord, I hope I get a book deal. Because I love love love not working.

Writing is work. Really. I can sit down and have words flowing out of my fingertips about unimportant things, but when it comes to writing a novel, writing is more like weaving in the damn dark. Lots of threads to keep track of and only the light of a solitary star to do it by.

BUT: I love having the time for my own projects. I love getting instant satisfaction and meeting people in the community with my freelancing for the newspaper (turning my 3rd piece in today) and I love having the time and the enrgy to pursue threads of things which intrigue me (historic preservation, anyone)? And I love working on my novel, because it is MINE and I'm doing it because I want to, unlike every single thing I ever did in a cubicle.

That being said, I can't continue to do this unless it becomes a viable career-- e.g. paid. The pittance I get from the newspaper and the relatively well-paid but mind-numbingly boring proofing jobs keep my self-respect hovering above groundlevel, but in the overall context of my life, I don't want to spend all day on something and not get paid for it. So book deal, I'm a'coming.

Just have to finish the novel first.

pictures

I was on the Square yesterday interviewing the manager of Madre's for a business profile I'm writing when the sun came out. The second picture, the uber-cute orangey building with an upstairs porch, is the world's greatest bookstore.

oh, and we live here.

Why you should get off of your east coast/west coast high horses and move to mississippi:

1. everything is cheaper.

2. you won't have to see people who don't love you because everyone's afraid to visit here.

3. there are opportunities to make a real difference in whatever cause you believe in.

4. shrimp and grits, barbecue, pecan pie, sweet potato casserole, fried catfish, sweet tea.

5. $40 a month membership to the swankiest gym in town, including all super-cool classes, free lockers, and free towels.

6. everyone goes to church. even the bourbon-swilling writers attend.

7. major history all over the place-- and yuppie coffeebars have arrived!

8. because at the sixteenth annual Guy Fawkes party of a British architect and his artist wife, you meet the owner of Big Truck Theater, where the cover's $5 for 4 hours of local music and the band performs on the bed of a fifties' flat-bed truck.

9. magnificent huge old live oaks and pecan trees. I LIVE IN A PLACE WITH PECAN TREES. HOW NEAT IS THAT.

10. because you smile to yourself whenever you count (one mississippi, two mississippi).

Christmas

Being the eldest child of an alcoholic and part of a huge clan of overly opinionated people as well as marrying a very definite personality has given me a rather distrubing ability to let other people make plans for me.

In the midst of a Christmas plans debate, I finally sat down and thought about what I wanted. And hence, an email. That's how my family now feuds. Through emails.

I think all families where people haven't thrown in the towel fight. Hopefully, it doesn't get too nasty. Hopefully, when it's just your opinion involved, you learn to keep your mouth shut. But there's something about people making decisions for me and assuming I'll go along that grates me, and hence I am standing up, beating my chest, and roaring out, no more!

Part of me yearns for the day when we won't have to drive or fly anywhere for Christmas-- for when the tables turn and our loved ones come to us. But the thought of a family-free Christmas day?

Despite everything, it stinks.

cry me a river

Everyone's been complaining about the last two posts because they were short.

Well, I got four words for you. "Cry me a river."

Mhmm (headwag).

Saying those magical four words reminds me of building the cabin. After few days of my nearly continuous complaints, my sweet husband developed a response. Think of a donkey, with that loud abrasive tone? Well, in that manner, he would say BOO HOO over my whining.

It always made me smile. Although the other day I told him that he had to stop telling me to shut my face in public, because while I understand that he says it in fun because he'd never actually want me to desist from talking, other people think he's abusive.

As I say to him, I'm akin to a shark. Talk or die.

Lexington

I love small towns. And Lexington, Virginia, right up in the Blue Ridge, is a real stunner. Go there sometime. There are old-fashioned inns from the 19th century right downtown, and if you don't go on Washington and Lee University's parents' weekend, you might even get a room.

A few pictures of Eliza, my mother, the president's house that Robert E. Lee built, and Lee Chapel, where R.E.L. is interred:

because we're southern, and oh so very gothic

i have left my newly beloved mississippi.

in nashville for the night, heading to lexington va to attend my sister's parents' weekend. pictures to follow... could include my entire nuclear family for the first time in years, since dad's out of jail and aparently attending.

it's good to be me.

Wolfgang Pauli

So, there's this character in my novel who is a scientist. A physicist, to be exact, though she is in love with her organic chemistry professor...but I digress. She's still in college, but she's a true scholar of physics...which is so, so, so not me that it can be hard to make her sound legit. I took Physics for Poets at Vandy and barely got a B.

She's reading up about Wolfgang Pauli's exclusion principle. I would prefer to have her reading Pauli directly, but since I'm not sure that the man ever actually wrote a book about his Nobel-winning principle, I figure it's safer to have her reading about him. Because that someone has to have covered.

I picked Pauli and his exclusion principle out of a web-page full of scientists and their discoveries because I think his could tie thematically in with my book. (Remember? There are no accidents?)

So I've read the exclusion principle definition about five times, ignoring those scary equations, and this is what I understand: he explained why things don't sink into things, but light and radiation can pass through. Like, we can stand on the ground and not be squished together, because we are separate because of the quantum way all those protons/neutrons/electrons move, but light and radiation can pass through because they're different. I don't know why, exactly, but something to do with atomic structure, perhaps. But anyway, that's what he did.

I could have referred to my bookmarked wilkipedia definition, but that right up there is honestly what I retained after five re-reads.

She had to be a physicist.

And what do physicists do, precisely? Things in labs? Because she wants to go to graduate school for physics and bless my little humanities heart, but I have no idea what she might do there--besides wear a lab coat and hold test tubes.

just so you know

So.

The novel cometh along. I'm planning to be done with a good solid complete draft by February.

I'm getting an article published in the local paper-- it's an interview I did with a mad crazy woman who's written a memoir and now wants to be best friends with me. I am getting paid.

The features department at the local paper might be offloading articles during their busy/supplement times onto me. They say they will, but the proof is in the assignment, so we'll see. I'm also in talks about profiling local and upcoming artists for the local paper's entertainment paper on a regular basis, which would be most fab. Again, we'll see.

On my way back through Nashville on Monday, I'm meeting with my uber-cool friend Danielle and this communications whiz she's working with, because they might possibly want me to profile this woman, which I could do from Oxford. Keep your fingers crossed.

And I have writing samples winging their way to Memphis, where if all stars align and the clouds part, an editor will let me be one of her freelancing pool, to write real magazine articles! That's kind of a long shot, but I'm hoping.

So that's me.

K's all disappointed because we showed up for volleyball yesterday, on a gorgeous Indian summer afternoon, and it was canceled. Then, tonight, the guys who were going to start playing basketball in a league are now displaced b/c of all the churches needing their gyms for Halloween activities. But hopefully he'll come home bearing news of a reschedule.

But still, we persevere.

We had a real writer and his super-cool wife to dinner on Friday. If any of y'all like thrillers, check Ace Atkins out at Amazon.

And lastly, speaking of Amazon, many thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law, who bestowed such generous bounty from that marvelous site-- I picked myself out "The Silver Spoon", which is THE Bible of Italian cooking, just in English for the 1st time, and "Laundry", so I will never shrink/permanently stain anything again.

ramblings of a wannabe writer

Every day I try to annoy someone. I'm doing it for professional reasons-- namely, pestering people to publish me. Not the novel-- it has to be done for that-- but article ideas. It's a wee bit humiliating, but I'm ok, because you know what?Eventually I'll break them :) Although yesterday the editor of Vanderbilt's alumni magazine blatantly lied to me, but hey, with a last name like doll and a nasty accent, I'd be a pissant too.

(No I wouldn't. She said that the Vanderbilt magazine only writes about issues in Nashville, which is a PATENT lie, and only uses seasoned Nashvillian writers, which is just stupid. She stinks.)

I think much of succeeding must be not listening to other people, namely the naysayers and the I'm-too-importants. But as I'm not successful yet, we'll see if that theory holds up :)

stress meditations

Today two Italian doctors with hearing problems told me to take an antiviral suppressant for the next year. The younger one paused on his way out of the door. "And stop worrying about it," he said ("it" being the disfiguring cold sores I get way too frequently). "Treat the pill like a vitamin, take it once a day, and never think about it."

The power of the mind over the body can demonstrate itself in pretty nutso ways. People having panic attacks really believe their heart is imploding. Women can summon the strength to raise cars off of their children. And when I was trapped in a stressful situation two years ago, I immediately got a cold sore...as in, one minute I'm stressed, the next I have the beginnings of a fever blister.

While doctors to admit a relationship between cold sore outbreaks and stress, I'm convinced that a host of physical ailments get medically treated while their root causes go undiagnosed. Not to sound too hippy-dip on you, but if you're consistently breaking down in some area (stomach, sinus, bowels), and you're not abnormally physically made, then perhaps that particular area is where your body manifests stress. So perhaps incorporate less caffeine, more sleep, and some yoga or a walk outside into your life.

I've done the proactive healthy things, and now I'll be trying another round of pills. Covering both bases seems like the best way to go.

Make sure you're covering yours.

bright and shiny dreams

It's hard to have a husband who makes...well, if he makes a lot, let's say, and I make zero, how many times is that?

The not-earning is getting to me. But on the other hand, when I look at my peers, they are in graduate school and have yet to make a dime, or are quitting jobs right and left (for darn good reasons), or are working jobs that they fully intend to quit as soon as possible.

Plus I came with a dowry, which is my little nugget of marital financial equality, and I hold on to that justifucation very tightly indeed.

But still. The not-earning is really tough.

It's not if I'm just sitting on my ass, people (can you taste the defensiveness? I can). I'm streaming ahead with my novel-- the new time has probably quadrupled my rate of speed, I'm interviewing people in town (a whole other story), I'm awaiting proofreading jobs from the journal where I used to work. But as always, I want to be there, which involves many, many uncertain months ahead, because THERE means a successful author.

So there. Life isn't just cake.

So far, I've interviewed two people in this town of Oxford-- no mean feat when you consider that I know no one.

My idea is to assemble a veritable dossier of mini-autobiographies of people in this town. I think it's a good idea, and hey, it's a great way to meet people. So far, I've interviewed a thrice-divorced English professor who is mad, mad, mad, and the CEO of K's company. (At 4.30 in the morning. And let me tell you, he is one tough nut, who came to the flourescently lit table with a whole wall of something that I just could not get through, even though I'm a pretty young thing who came bearing homemade bread, even though I was on time AT FOUR-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, even though I did the canine equivalent of rolling on my back, baring my belly, and smiling to show how much more important than me he indeed is.)

So I'll let you know how the whole following-the-dream thing goes. Keep your fingers crossed.

in the throes

Things I'm missing about DC:

Cheap organic milk
Whole Foods coffee
Brown Cown plain creamtop yogurt

Things I'm LOVING about Oxford

-the weather
-the friendliness of just about everyone
-the historic downtown
-the fact i'll be paying about 3 bucks for every pilates and yoga class at the ridiculously cheap gym
-Square Books (the bookstore)
-the weekly volleyball game where you park on the side of a country road, take a trail up over a ridge, and emerge into a near canyon that happens to contain a volleyball court and many passionate old men
- my very first DSL and landline

Move south, my friends, move south.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Apparently, intending to write a guest blog means that someday, writing from the K. might grace this website, but not any time soon.

So it's just me.

Today is Wednesday, the official start of our Mississippian life. We're ensconscned in a three-month-leased townhouse, complete with hardwood floors downstairs only, a gas fireplace, and for the first time in my life, a garbage disposal. K. keeps clucking over the shoddy workmanship of these new homes, but it's clean, high ceiling, bright, and airy. Kind of like a luxury hotel except with our stuff.

I keep clucking over the fact that this development is very akin to a dollhouse, with the faux-Victorian fronts, complete with dolls, in the form of lissome young collegiate things who surround us on every side.

K. told a colleague about my dollhouse/dolls comment.

The man's response: "Yes, that is hard on the older women here. How old's your wife?"

K." "Twenty-four," with a look of disbeleif.

The man: "Two years out? Yeah, I can see that."

See what, precisely? Apparently, I am over the hill at my fresh new age of twenty-four. I want to stomp my foot and protest that indeed, I am a child bride.


So K.'s at his first day of work. I have gone to yoga, put in a good two hours on the novel, and now I'm taking a lunch-clean myself break before I go try to get myself a job.

Wish me luck.

the sum-up: One month, many tears, and 1400 miles later

We're in Oxford. More on that later. My husband K. is planning a guest blog, so stay tuned.

But since I'm finally sitting on my own couch, in our own space, here's the sum-up. Start at the bottom.
















































And p.s.: tomorrow is my birthday!

apologies

number one:

k's laptop dropped out of a cabin windowsill, and we haven't been able to deal with a new way of uploading pics. We have them, but you can't. Sorry.

number two:

being a crappy poster, but come on, it's crunch time, and we worked until after 8 tonight, then drove an hour here, ate dinner, and now i've got to get some rest before tomorrow's marathon.

But:

tomorrow, we put on the roofing tin. the tarpaper and decking is already down.

and the windows and doors get put in.

and we finish our loft.

which means, my friends, we have a cabin. a drafty one without its final flooring, an incomplete porch, and no installed stove, but four walls with a roof and doors a cabin makes.

g/night.

September

It seems that September is our month of gigantic change. Last year, K. and I threw our mutual belongings into a house together and got married. This year, we're building a cabin and in limbo between D.C. and Mississippi.

Two of my old friends have become engaged. Two friends have had their first children. My best friend has bought a house.

Change.

Perhaps unfortunately, I believe in the power of the past. And so, as we near completion of this project and move onto a very undefined future, I keep reminding myself-- that last year, I was 6 days married. And two years ago, I was in a different state, still a student, months away from my I'm-graduating-college-without-a-job crisis. And the September before that-- I was still dating the wrong guy, still trying to stuff myself into the college-sized hole.

I visited my former best friend today. Former best friend; isn't that odd? Why aren't there any books about maintaining friendships after the easy laughs are gone? According to our culture, with its emphasis on the self-created urban family (Will and Grace, Friends, Sex and the City), friends are forever, and family are the baggage you leave behind. But in my life, family are the ones you're forced to keep sticking with, and friends-well, I've had too many friends fade out or burn out, depending. It takes years, but here I am, still young, and I have two definitive best friends I no longer talk to. (Let's not even enter the boyfriend realm.)

Anyway, enough. In a week, the roof will be on, God willing. In a month, we'll be denizens of the fine state of Mississippi.

And next September? Here's hoping that we're in a house, the right house, still healthy, still here, and for Pete's sake, not moving.

5 minutes left on a computer in the library.

the walls are way above our heads. the roof tin gets delivered next thursday.

i love vermont-- we went to a steakhouse-- on our 1st anniversary-- with my mother's cousin and her bf (nice, but so not romantic)-- and at this steakhouse, they buy as per their contract with VermontFresh from local farmers. how cool is that? if only the rest of the world had such high standards.

speaking of high....the walls are above our heads.

:)

Short, because Saturday is a work day

This morning, I rolled on to my own arm and woke up because it didn't feel like mine. Yep. Whole new arm here, chock full o'muscle. Let me tell you, all you abs exercisers and aerobics fanatics, that building a cabin for 11 hours a day on a hillside is supremo exercise.

That being said, of course, I prefer aristocratically languid exercising.

Cheerio chickens. Hope everyone is well.

Pictures ? below. The first is now; the 2nd, Sept. 6th; the 3rd, the site pre-bulldozer.



  

  

  

It's a woman's perogative to change her mind

Conversations from the Camp:

1.
Him: You're a whiner and complainer...(it's in a tune, like a...well, I'm tone-deaf. But it's a song, consisting of that phrase.)

Me (given the fact I've been complaining for 24 hours): Then why'd ya marry me? Huh? Huh?

Him: You'll recall, my sweet, that I began singing that song to you on our honeymoon.

Me: Sucker.

2.

Me, sitting astride a log that I'm peeling the dirty bark off so that it will not blunt K.'s chainsaw, hysterically crying: I want a home! A home! I want a shower, and a room with a door!

K.: We're building a cabin. It's for 30 days. Cityslicker.

Me: I'm not a cityslicker! I don't mind working! I'm a good worker! But I (bursting into fresh sobs) I don't like living under a tarp in the woods! That doesn't make me a cityslicker!

K., considering for a moment: That's true, isn't it.


3.

Me: I hate living outside.

K.: I know. You'll never have to do it again.

Me, thinking to myself: Victory?



So, you've probably gathered that the euphoria has worn off. It's ok. At the end of this damn, wretched, dirt-and-bug-filled month, we'll have a cabin, and I love cabins. I love woodstoves. I love the trees. I am a little afraid to go to the outhouse by myself after dark, but who wouldn't be?

That being said, the cabin is coming along. Mostly, we've spent this week milling logs. Now, if you're like I was before this adventure, milling logs means nothing to you. Here's what those two words mean: Finding a tree. Cutting it down. Cutting all extra branches off of them and leaving them to rot in the woods, a fact that fills my psycho-neat-freakness with HORROR. Hauling said log to cabin site, where you use a peavey (amazing miraculous tool) to heave the log that you can't budge by pushing on it up onto risers. The bark is filled with mud from being dragged, so I “skin” it with a drawknife. K. then sets up a very long board on top of the log, and cuts the length of the log 3 times, a process which takes a minimum of 30 minutes, not including the inevitable chainsaw repairs.

We need over 80 of these.

But as K. says, we are not the kind of family who buys pre-cut logs, or even a darling little antique cabin that was crafted with handtools (I tried this, since we have the tools. My dear Lord, those pioneers were made of IRON).


But here we are, still married, still talking to each other. And only 10 days in :)

____

Written Saturday morning. And after 9 hours of work on the cabin, some visible progress, and that thorough venting of my feelings, I am once again quite chipper.

A woman's perogative.

P.S. I have tried for half-an-hour to post pictures. It cannot be done this evening. Very sorry.

___

Sunday morning: trying again!

1. the site before bulldozer

 

the site post bulldozer:

 

The site with sill logs:

 

The site with two layers of logs, joist hangers and porch joists in, and doorways blocked out:

 

And there we are! Not bad for ten days work.

hand on hip and jaw cocked

showered. in clothes that do not smell of woodsmoke. wearing flipflops. it's like a vacation!

after finishing the foundation, K. and I are at his parents' house for the night...and our day off tomorrow!

now, I'm tired of talking about the cabin. It's what K. and I do all day long, think about in the wee hours, and all of our outside conversations with other people include it. So I'll keep y'all updated, and when we remember our camera, I'll post pictures, but that's it, ya hear?
________

problem being, I have nothing else to say. We don't even listen to the radio. I haven't read a book in a week. It's funny how fast a world can get small. Which brings me to a previous ponder: aging.

Because we all know that I like to chew my nails to stumps over things that aren't actually pressing problems, I worry about aging all the time. Not just the physical aspects, but also the personality parts. It seems to me, in my admittedly extreme youth, that some people just...stop at a certain point. And it's not even when they're super-duper old. They stop changing and growing and all those new-agey things I'm so fond of and become more like caricatures of what they were when that stop occurred.

Anyone noticed this? A person whose life, opinions, habits become static and gradually become more like a default reality?

In the cases I've seen, it's as if these people have had some small internal spring cease to function, because of some life tragedy, or, in one case, laziness.

That "stopping" has gone on my list of things to avoid, along with becoming fat, wearing mommy-jeans, and unprotected sun exposure.