It's All Too Much, and other assorted chaos

A few quick items from Chez Green, Blue, Brown:

- Four out of five household members surveyed feel like dog doo. Fevers all around! Yay!

- Speaking of dog doo... 30 days until Amelia gets her service dog. We are officially getting excited at this point. We should find out who her dog will be in just a few short weeks, so stay tuned.

- Ten years of marriage. Lori says that means only 40 more to go until she can dump me.

- If you're ever getting ready to move and/or declutter, I recommend the book, It's All Too Much, by Peter Walsh. It's a literary classic, on par with the great works of - no wait. What I meant to say is it's got some very helpful ideas about how to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. And how to keep from getting right back into the same trap.

I can't really pull off a full book review because a fair bit of it wasn't relevant to me, but there are some recurring themes that I found helpful while cleaning out the basement, the garage, the barn, the closets, the cabinets, etc.

What's the point of keeping something for sentimental reasons if it's just going to sit in a box in the attic? Give it an honored place in your life, or get rid of it. The memories don't go away. And make sure you're making good memories TODAY too.

What good is a hobby if it's really just an ever-expanding blob of accessories, materials, and tools that's grown to the point of being discouraging rather than enjoyable? Give your hobby a finite amount of space, organize it, and forget about "someday" projects. If you fill the allotted space, then you can't bring in anything new without getting rid of something first.

If you're keeping something just because you spent "good" money on it, get rid of it. Instead of letting it gather dust, let somebody else get the good out of it. That money's never coming back anyway. It's long gone.

Stuff costs money. Stuff takes space, which also costs money. And a lot of stuff loses a good bit of value the moment you buy it. So if you're not actively using it or enjoying it, it's a triple-whammy financially. Throw in the psychological weight of just having it sit there, inert and unloved. (Then if you want to expand on the book's ideas, throw in the embodied energy, the resources consumed, the pollutants, etc...)

It's not what you own that determines your happiness. It's what you do with your time.

- I thought I had a couple more items for this post, but I've lost them now. I need to declutter my brain I guess....

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I'm too sexy for my dirt

It's come to my attention that The San Diego Crunchy Chicken has nominated me for Hottest Eco-blogger. This made me laugh.

Don't get me wrong - I'm flattered. It's just that anybody who's met me in person knows I'm a bit self-conscious and fairly nerdy. I don't recall ever being described to as "hot" before. I don't exude confidence, allure, or pheromones.

I started keeping my hair cut short so that I could do it myself with clippers. The upside is that after cutting it, I don't have to mess with it at all. The downside is that it grows and I eventually put the kids on the school bus looking like Nick Nolte's mug shot before I realize it's time to buzz it again. My natural wardrobe is a plain t-shirt and jeans. Almost my entire wardrobe comes from the local thrift shop, and one of my favorite shirts will be old enough to legally buy its own alcohol next year. I recently added a zip-up hoodie for that Unabomber look. My daughter's sleep issues mean I often have bags under my eyes. In fact, this morning, when I went to drop off some canned goods at the local food pantry, they thought I was among the needy.

But maybe the Universe has taken a turn in my favor. Maybe dork is the new hot.

So if you want to win one for the anti-hero, remember to vote for me in Crunchy's poll when it appears.


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Makin' Lemonade

One of the challenges of trying to do this small farm thing AND have a day job is that there's not always time to finish projects. I'd venture to say that most people who try this don't end up with their properties looking like the cover of a magazine. The partially finished projects combine with the scraps leftover from completed projects to create a lot of debris.

The problem with trying to sell your house in this case is that most home buyers don't appreciate the, uh, "working farm aesthetic."

I've been giving Freecycle, Craigslist, and our local recycling center a workout, but they have their limits. And even the trash man won't take a broken down old goat shelter. Also, it turns out that when it comes to rotting lumber, even free is not a low enough price.

So, I decided that to commemorate, um... our move? The Pumpkin Show? Our upcoming 10th Anniversary? ... I decided to commemorate all those things at once. It was time for a bonfire.

A surplus of cinder blocks for a firepit. Some water-damaged cardboard boxes as a firestarter. A teepee of unusable lumber, a failed attempt at a bookshelf, a flimsy wooden chair, and we had ourselves quite a little fire.

The boys danced around it, helped gather the scraps, and tossed in woody stems (Thanks for helping with the weeding! Keep it up!) Amelia, confined to the other side of the back yard fence, decided to get in touch with her primitive side and get naked. And Lori took advantage of the situation to grab a few rare moments of solitude inside.

Fun for the whole family, and a nice little soil ammendment for next year's garden.

Throw in an overnight shower to put out the last of the coals, and it was almost serendipitous.




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Coming up for air

So, where to begin... Well, I guess the obvious place to begin is here: We've decided to sell our house. Or at least to attempt to sell our house. It's been a tough decision for a whole bunch of reasons. And what comes next is still a work in progress. But that's another post.

I don't know how it'll go really. To determine a fair market price, real estate agents normally look for comparable properties that have sold recently. But what to do when there aren't really any comparable properties?

We've got almost 9 acres. Most places around here are either under 5 acres or over 100. We've got a stocked pond. We've got tons of high quality fencing. We've got all the little things we've been doing that are hard to figure in. Some people would be thrilled to have dwarf fruit trees, or a chicken pen in the pole barn, or an arbor on the back of the house, or loads of extra insulation in the attic. Other people wouldn't care a bit.

And just to make it harder, there have hardly been any sales around here over the last couple years. This is an area with a low population density, and people who live here don't tend to move very often. In the four years since we moved in, I think only one house on our road has sold.

Not that people haven't tried, on occasion. But this is just a very low volume real estate market. Which may not bode well for us.

On the other hand, our place has a lot going for it, especially for the right kind of buyer.

Theoretically, we can come out ahead on this place, despite the rough market. But as with many things, you can't know the true worth of something until you have a buyer.

So that'll be interesting.

It's been a rough month or two for me. I was working 60-70 hour weeks for all of September and part of October, including at least five weekends in a row and a number of late nights, while at the same time trying to help get the house ready to sell. Four years worth of crap in the basement, including quite a few water-damaged items from a flooding incident. Half-finished projects that I wasn't sure what to do with. Leftover scraps and materials from finished projects. All the stains and marks and dings that kids can inflict on a house.

Throw in some midnight cow chasing, subsequent fence repairs (plural) and the resulting ruined garden, car repairs, computer repairs, fraudulent transactions in our bank account to the tune of over $2000... I guess you could say I'm a little tired.

Selling this place is the first in a long string of question marks. I'll get to more of this story as time and energy permit. But the good news is that we're in the home stretch on house prep.

Anybody want to buy a house?




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Sabbatical

After more than three years, and over 400 posts, the time has come for me to take a break from this blog. It's a tough decision for me, because I owe a lot to this little corner of cyberspace, but for a variety of reasons, it's time to step back, re-prioritize, re-energize, and get some things done.

Part of the problem is just burnout. I used to be anxious to write about all kinds of ideas and projects and topics and stories. I used to be able to write and write and write, and enjoy it all.

Now I write just to put some words up here, which just isn't the same.

Another part of it is that after doing several tech-free weekend days, I discovered just how many hours were being lost into the computer. It turns out that a lot of times, those hours can be better spent. Not that I think my time here is wasted. I just need to shift the balance the other way for a while.

There are other reasons for me to walk away for a bit, but I'll spare you the mundane details. After a while, I expect I'll be back, with some good stories under my belt, and some fresh motivation to share them. And I'll still keep an eye on many of your blogs. I rarely comment, unless I feel like I have something significant to say, but I'll be reading.

I've learned a lot from all of you, and I've enjoyed sharing ideas and encouragement and constructive criticism and frivolities. I've made some good friends, and as weird as it may sound, I think this blog not only motivated me, but put me on a positive trajectory that I might never have been on otherwise.

So thanks for hanging out with me. We'll have to do it again sometime.


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The Hard Sell

A couple days ago, we returned from a week-long vacation. It's our second road trip this year, and likely to be our last for a while. Among other things, traveling with Amelia is just really hard, especially when it comes to sleep.

Anyway, on our way back from visiting beaches and relatives near Charleston, SC, we stopped to spend a couple days with some old friends in North Carolina. We have a running joke about relocating near them just so I can keep my tractor running.

But when we got there, they gave us the sales pitch on moving there for real. Now understand that these are people who have lived in twenty different places - from Branson, Missouri to Adelaide, Australia. And that's just since they've been married! Now after all that, this is the place they've decided to put down roots. This is the place they've fallen for.

So we arrived tired and disheveled on Friday night, and mostly just chatted and then went to bed. As we're milling around in our jammies Saturday morning, trying to wake up, there's a knock at the door. It's their neighbor, with a big platter of cantaloupe, sausage patties, and biscuits - leftovers from their own breakfast. Seriously, how many places can you go where your neighbors bring you a hot breakfast out of the blue? She was a wonderfully nice woman, and I'm not just saying that because of the food. She and her husband (also very nice) have five kids - two of whom are autistic, and at least one adopted.

So while Lori and I are marveling at the neighborly good will, the kids are all outside playing. There are a ton of kids in the neighborhood. Everybody knows everyone. The older kids watch out for the younger ones, and the parents watch out for each other's kids.

In the afternoon, we split up for a bit. Casey and Lori stopped into a "crunchy" mom-oriented consignment shop, with cloth diapers, attachment parenting books, used clothes, etc. then a 99-cent book store, and a yarn shop. Will took me on a driving tour of the area. There's little more than a crossroads of a town, with a gas station / sandwich shop, a few newer buildings, and quaint old homes. And a sort of weekly summer block party, with live music, a giant slip-n-slide, local produce, and other such coolness. We saw numerous roadside farm stands, many small farms with livestock of most every sort, and half-million dollar homes interspersed with old farm houses, mobile homes, and typical suburban-looking houses. Rolling hills, woods, pastures, streams, ponds, the whole beautiful countryside bit.

After that, we drove half an hour away to the lovely UNC campus, where we had the best Mediterranean food I've ever encountered. Behind the counter, the deli proudly listed the local farms that supply their produce.

From there we headed for a local dairy farm to get some ice cream. On the way, we saw a beautifully vivid double rainbow. As we pulled into the parking lot, the rainbow appeared to descend right into the ice cream shop. It overlooks the picturesque dairy farm, which was made even more picturesque by the addition of a lovely sunset, complete with migrating geese flying in formation. Ice cream never tasted so good. The crescent moon was adorned with wispy clouds by the time we made it back to their house.

I have to say we were impressed that our friends were able to arrange for the Breakfast Fairy, the double rainbow, the sunset, and everything else. We wondered if we'd wandered on to the set of the Truman Show or something. They really know how to make a sales pitch.

Then, just to really make us crazy, Will found a house for sale on the local Craigslist site: An old homestead, with 2.5 acres. The house has 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. Custom cabinets in the kitchen, with another side kitchen with oak countertops. There are two fireplaces - one in the kitchen and one in the living room, as well as a Quadrafire wood stove. Thouse has a wrap-around porch, metal roof, built-in china cabinets, a cedar closet, hardwood floors, and new low-E windows. The property has a 30x40 garage, a woodshop and a shed, all three with electric. The garage also has water and cabinets, and a pool table. There's a deep well, as well as an old hand-dug stone well and a natural spring. I could go on.

And this property is for sale at a price about 25% under our current mortgage.

Sigh...

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Parenting and perspective

Earlier this year I had lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in many, many years. We were catching each other up on our lives, our families, and what we'd been up to all that time. The subject of my daughter's medical & developmental issues came up. She was asking questions and I was answering, trying to paint a picture of the complexities of Amelia's world. And then she said something strange: "It's so tragic."

It's probably not strange, really, but was strange for me to hear. Anybody who has ever met Amelia knows she's a happy kid. Even strangers can't resist her contagious giggle. Put her in a on a beach or in a swimming pool, and she is purest joy, personified.

Sure, there are bad days, and more often, bad nights. I've complained about them here on occasion. But there's no sense of loss, of grieving. There are plenty of tragic stories out there, but ours is not one of them.

I don't fault my friend for thinking what she did. It's probably pretty common for those who haven't been around kids like Amelia very much. For us, she's just another kid; another family member; another person to share the love. We deal with the challenges of an autistic kid the same way we deal with the challenges of our other kids. We struggle, we whine, we adapt, we fail, and succeed, we laugh and cry, and we keep going.

All of this is really just to reinforce Sharon Astyk's great post from today:

Asked, most of these parents probably would have said they could not handle a child with autism. I suspect I would have as well. And yet, when a child with autism came their way, they were not only able to “handle” it, but to make a life of joy and beauty, and moments of pure happiness and celebration out of that reality. It can happen to all of us - and almost all of us manage, not just to survive, but to find new ways to be happy and grateful and feel that they got lucky.

(All this after a vacation which was most certainly not made easier by the presence of our pint-sized, mess-making insomniac. )

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