August 18, 2011



Sunset from deck on 8/15



Small part of big patch of asters



Tipi in which we spent a lot
of time "roughing it"

I am beginning to feel like one of the Keystone Cops. We installed ten more 12 ft boards yesterday morning - then ran out of caulk. I knew we were getting low, but did I buy more when we went Down There on Tuesday?? No! If I had a brain, I'd be dangerous. Our gas bill is going to be horrendous this month.

So, after I arrived home yesterday, it was once again too hot to do more work on the deck. (I had treated myself to a vanilla latte and a specialty loaf of bread at the Great Harvest Bread store to soften the blow of going Down There again - and it worked!) So, once again, we attacked the inside of the shop.  While I was gone, JB had built a rack hanging from the joists to hold long pieces of lumber. We moved the lumber in, and other shop items and found places for them. While taking things off the large, tarp covered shelves outside, we kept finding more dried mushrooms. Don't know where the pack rats crawled off to die though. Didn't find either one of them in their nests. 

So today, you guessed it, we will take that year's supply of caulking I bought yesterday and get another early start on the deck.  I would really like to change the subject, but afterall, this is a diary.

I am finding time to read a intriguing historical novel that takes place in the years between the first and second World Wars. It is The Hunt, by William Diehl published in 1990, and previously titled 27. Told against the backdrop of the events of that time, it demonstrates how easily a population can simply overlook and/or deny what is happening in their country, or someone else's. Very scary. Hmmm. Sounds a little like our current situation. Obviously not as dramatic as back then, but sometimes subtle can be even worse. I do believe that it is possible to have things too easy to care about political events and where they are taking us.

And speaking of having it easy, our deck is going to be wonderful for sitting out on and watching the sunsets. Even now I can just walk out on it in my stocking feet and take pictures, instead of having to put my shoes on to go out the front or side door and walking around on the dirt. I captured a stunning sunset the other evening that unfolded while I was writing my blog.

All the rose hips I see now on the bushes are already getting huge. By October when they are ripe I shouldn't have to pick as many as I did last year to get the poundage I want. I am definitely going to make more rose hip jam this Fall.

My daily blogs are certainly going to be shorter since I am down to our current status. It was great fun to relive the past three years as I was writing about it. I had almost forgotten so many of the events and challenges that we had experienced. Like almost a whole year of hand washing our laundry! As I was writing, I was thinking, "Oh My God! That's right!" Forgot it was so many months.

Because of the type of inverter we have, we still have to be careful about overloading the electrical system. Just this morning we had the water on, the fan on in the crawl space, the coffee maker on, and then I made toast which caused everything to shut down. As I mentioned before, we would like to get a larger capacity inverter at some point down the road. But it will have to be a straight and easy road that will allow us to save up for it.  Thank you, Wall Street.

As I was writing about my trip to California in May to visit my best friend, I began to doubt if my City Mind ever existed. Sandy is a city girl, born and bred in Chicago. I am a small town girl who, as an adult, has experienced living in big city suburbs (Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago). She has NEVER been camping. Her idea of roughing it is staying at the Hilton with slow room service. Whereas I feel like I have spent 1/4 of my life in a tent, cooking over an open fire or Coleman stove. Not only did my parents and I do a lot of camping when I was growing up, but JB and I have camped a lot also. And of course there is all the Rendezvousing we did. Talk about roughing it! So my City Mind was never as domesticated as many others may be. But I still have changed my attitude in many ways over the last three years. And, as they say, attitude is everything.