Richard and Rachel Lane Turn School Bus Into Energy-Efficient Home | AOL Real Estate.

These people are living the green dream and having fun while doing it. Spacious yet minimalistic, fun yet funky, economical yet eco friendly…I could go on like this forever, but these are all ways to describe this eco chic couple. The Lanes live on a bus in the San Francisco Bay area: a former school bus, to be exact, that they purchased in Oregon via Craigslist for $3,000.  The 39-foot bus is just like “a regular home” on the inside: it features a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, lounge area and even a movie room on the bus’ “second story.” Its livability is achieved by using custom, hand-made furniture, and IKEA pieces that have been altered to fit the bus’ specs. And it even sleeps 10! Plus they live completely off the grid and only pay $100 a month for maintenance this is the new American Dream.

Rachel, a therapist, and Richard, an IT professional, have been living on the bus full-time for four years. Many people are taking the American Dream to the next level by coming up with creative ways to still have the creature comforts of home in a smaller but happy space.  The increase of alternative housing is in response to the change in the economic climate and the greater need for flexibility and sustainability. Eco friendly is not just for the tree huggers anymore.

Guest Post- Abbas Hussain

Steel buildings are rapidly becoming the favoured construction type for the present residential, industrial, institutional, commercial and agricultural markets. The market for steel construction is progressively growing at a fast pace. And, it comes as no surprise since; steel offers a huge number of benefits to the building purchasers. By being economical, functional, flexible, energy proficient, environmentally friendly and healthy; steel buildings offer buyers a comfort level which cannot be paralleled by any other construction methods.

Photo Credit- Amsterdam, The Netherlands -Throughout the city and its outskirts one can find numerous colorful, space-efficient complexes of affordable and luxury apartments constructed of modified containers.-visualremodeling.com

Here are the numerous benefits of a steel building:

Safe:

Steel buildings are safe since they help to protect the occupants from hurricanes, wind, torrential rains and tornadoes. They are also resistant to earthquakes and there are no risks involved even when earthquakes happen at high intensity. Additionally, steel structures are entirely resistant to nearly all forms of natural damage. Steel can also be engineered to survive seismic and wind ravages.

Versatile:

Steel buildings come with adjustable panels that enable the sizes of each unit to be changed as per the requirements. This feature also allows expansion in a much easier way when compared to the traditional building construction techniques.

Strength:

Steel has the maximum strength-to-weight ratio as matched against other building materials. This implies that regardless of their light-weight, buildings made of steel are pretty much stronger and extremely durable. Moreover, it is a known fact that steel building components are nearly 50% lighter than wood, which helps to decrease footing and foundation needs and this additionally protects the slab while adding stability and strength to buildings. Besides, it is non-combustible and so it won’t ignite and since it is unsolvable, mildew and mould do not grow on them.

Time Saving:

Most steel building dealers offer the buildings in the form of pre-fabricated structures. These are directly sent to the construction site to have the building set up for immediate assembling and the entire construction process can be finished in less time.

Cost Effective:

Construction of buildings made of steel undoubtedly costs lesser than the traditional ones. Steel can be obtained and casted at less cost in comparison to bricks, wood and cement. So, the expenditure involved in constructing steel buildings is definitely less. On finishing the construction work, the metal roofs of the structure are covered with heat deflecting coatings. Therefore, the cooling and heating costs are quite lower. Furthermore, steel is not prone to damages inflicted by insects and termites. Hence, it helps to reduce the monthly and annual maintenance cost.

Other Benefits:

In several instances, the home insurance premiums may be lower if the structure of the building is build using steel. Moreover, steel framing connections are by far stronger than wood connections and it allows for taller walls. Besides, the entire structure can be made to look conventional by enveloping them with traditional construction materials such as bricks, stucco or siding. In addition, steel is 100% recyclable, which makes it an environmentally sound option to most other building materials.

Overall, steel remains resilient and firm to all types of damages. The robustness, strength and flexibility of steel make it an ideal option for different kinds of buildings. As such, a steel building is steadily turning out to be a more widespread choice!

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Not all of our plans are simple, but we tend to get around to tackling the simple ones first because they seem so… well… simple.  Once begun, though, our plans seem to fall prey to whatever the opposite of entropy happens to be called—disentropy, antientropy, unentropy.

You know about entropy.  That’s the principal that says things tend to devolve into their simplest form over time.  It’s the principle that disproves the theory that if you give enough monkeys access to enough typewriters for enough time, eventually, they’ll write the complete works of Shakespeare.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!  Instead, the monkeys will find that flinging typewriters full of poo is much more entertaining than just flinging poo and they won’t type anything at all.  That’s entropy!  Another way to say it is:  we all rot.  Left to its own devices, nothing gets more complex over time.

Our plans, on the other hand, given enough time, tend to become infinitely more complex than we can possibly imagine.  (Or is that Obi-Wan Kenobi if Darth Vader kills him—I can never remember…)

I think I’ll call it Murphentropy!  That makes it the subclause of Murphy’s law that states that there is no such thing as a simple plan—only people foolish enough to believe they have one.

And I know it’s true, because it once took us two years to rebuild a bathroom.  What happened was, we went to a local home improvement store which happened to be going out of business and we found a corner shower stall.  And we thought, “hmmm… that corner shower stall would fit into that our teeny broom closet of a master bathroom, and then we’d have another shower we could use, and (everybody say this together): It will increase the value of our house!”  Uh-huh.  Only the corner stall wouldn’t fit in the bathroom with the existing vanity.  If only we could find a pedestal sink.  We kept on browsing and, lo and behold, we found one.  All we needed now was a new toilet—white, thank you—please God, don’t make us put the harvest gold one back in.  Soon, we found ourselves a white toilet, and it was all on sale, and all we had to do was rip out the old bathroom and install our new booty and our lives would be complete!

Uh-huh!

Have you ever tried to install a shower stall in a bathroom that doesn’t have an existing shower?  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  You see, your standard shower consists of “pipes” which make “water” come “out” when you try to take a shower.  Because our bathroom didn’t have an existing shower, there were no “pipes” and hence, no “water.”  The thought of standing around naked in a shower stall with no water seemed somehow inefficient to us in terms of getting clean, so we knew we needed pipes.  Only, to install pipes, you first have to perform a complex ritual involving seven plumbers and an African witch doctor dancing around a bonfire on the summer solstice offering prayers to Goombar, the god of bathroom plumbing.  If Goombar is pleased, you are allowed to install your pipes.  Apparently, we pissed Goombar off.

So what happened first was:  I hired a plumber.  I foolishly, naively, stupidly, hired a plumber.  The plumber came out and crawled under the house and made lots of important plumbing sounds by essentially banging randomly on any pipes he could find.  Then he cut out enormous hunks of wall board and sautered some new random pipes onto our existing random pipes and then presented me a bill for approximately half the national debt.  At this point, I foolishly, naively and stupidly believed that the plumbing was finished and we could install the new bathroom.  I believed that right up until David came home from work and laid eyes on our new pipes and declared them “all wrong!”

Now I know what you are thinking.  David is a computer guy, while the plumber is… well… a plumber.  So wouldn’t the plumber be far more qualified to get the job “all right,” than David would be to declare it “all wrong?”  I indulged in this sort of thinking as well—for about twelve seconds.  Then I realized that A. I have to live with David, while B. I do not have to live with the plumber.  So naturally I sided with David.  Unfortunately, by declaring the plumbing “all wrong,” it was now incumbent upon David to make it right.  And David didn’t seem to be in any big hurry.  Mostly, he seemed to be considering what he was going to do—you know—while he was watching TV or we were camping in Death Valley.  Maybe he was sneaking out every full moon and doing dances to try and get back into Goombar’s good graces.  All I know is that we had this empty little cave where our bathroom used to be and we had a bunch of unopened boxes containing a new bathroom taking up space in the shop and that was the state of affairs for a good looooong time.

So what finally happened was… we invited my parents up for Christmas.  Or was it Thanksgiving?  I can’t remember, but the end result was the same.  The thought of having to share a bathroom with my parents for up to a week was horrifying enough to motivate David to fix whatever it was he didn’t like about the pipes so that the bathroom could proceed.

This necessitated a rather comical scenario wherein David’s father came over and spent an entire day crawling around under the house banging on pipes in a vaguely plumberish way and attempting to carry on a conversation with David (who was in the house) that went something like this:

David:  “Can you find the hot water pipe?”

Dad:  “Mmmff mmmff mfff…”

David:  “What?”

Dad:  “Mmmff mmmff mfff…” (louder this time)

David:  “No!  Not that one, it’s the other one!”

Dad:  “Mmmff mmfff?”

David runs outside and crawls under the house.

Sounds of banging on pipes.

Sounds of muffled conversation.

More banging on pipes.  (Goombar likes it when you bang on the pipes a lot.)

Then David would reappear in the house and yell, “Okay, you have the hot water line?”

And dad would yell “Mmmff mmmff mfff…”

This went on for most of the day.  They were probably not as efficient as the plumber, but they made up for it by being far more entertaining and much cheaper.  In the end, I think it cost me a couple of sandwiches and some soda for lunch.  The toughest part was the physical discomfort of having to stifle all of my snorks and giggles whenever one of them was near enough to be offended by my mirth.  And in the end, they fixed whatever was “all wrong.”  Or perhaps they just banged on pipes in a manly fashion and didn’t change anything and just never admitted it.   All I know that when we finally got around to hooking up the shower, water did come out when you pulled the little handle—take THAT Goombar!

The part of the project that turned out to be the most difficult was actually the linoleum.  It turns out that your bathroom floor is glued on… with real glue!  (Who knew?!)  That means that if you put the glue down and then you put the floor down on it and you screw it up?  There’s no backsies.   You have to rip the whole thing out and go buy new linoleum and start all over again or you have to immediately sell the house to unsuspecting buyers.  If it hadn’t been for the fact that the bathroom was roughly the size of your average postage stamp (if you cut it in half), we might have been intimidated by the prospect of putting down a floor and hired somebody to do it.  As it turned out, we did just fine once we got brave enough to try.

You would think that this project would have turned us off to rebuilding bathrooms, but it wasn’t that long before we actually did it again!  The root of the problem was that we purchased a house that had been built in the early 80’s, but apparently, the people who built the house had really, really fond memories of the 70’s.  The carpet was avocado green.  One bathroom and parts of the kitchen were harvest gold (the kitchen counters were actually the kind with gold flakes embedded in them) and the other bathroom was baby blue.  The overall effect was to scream “POLYESTER PANTSUIT!”  If Donna Summer had dropped in, she would have immediately begun looking for the disco ball.  So it was either start listening to the Bee Gees again or start working on the house.

Ironically, the second bathroom turned out to be far more technical than the first.  That’s because this time we (again foolishly) went from a shower stall to a tub and shower combo and the bathroom wasn’t, technically, large enough for the tub.  In addition, the old shower had leaked down through the subfloor and we were afraid we would have to replace the joist and THEN when we went to replace the wallboard, we found out that we were the proud owners of “The Amazing Sort-Of Trapezoidal Bathroom.”  Which shouldn’t have surprised us because when we tore out the old dry-wall, we found an empty beer can inside.  And the piece de resistance (literal translation: stupidest thing we did) was that we installed a pocket door in the new bathroom which was so daunting a task that even the linoleum had no power to frighten us this time around.

This time, though, we were at least smart enough to know that it wouldn’t be a simple project, so naturally, we finished the second bathroom in only six months.  Maybe that’s because we had learned a valuable lesson when we rebuilt the first bathroom—invite your parents to spend Christmas sooner this time!  (I think I was actually adding the last coat of paint the day before my parents arrived.)

And of course, all this was by way of introduction to our latest “simple plan,” affectionately known as “the water project from hell.”  But now that’s going to have to wait for another day!

Inside an earthship at Greater World

Being plugged into everyday society can be daunting for some. It is this trapped, unsustainable way of life that takes all good green intentions and throws them out the window. As each new generation emerges amidst the digital whirlwind technology that keeps expanding beyond our control (hello Apple’s 6 iPhone versions in five years) it is no wonder they take this planet for granted. Some people have decided to go at it alone and step off the polluted, toxic grid they were born into. Taking a conscientious step back to live off the land rather than live on the land can be an ever humbling experience offering a renewed sense of mind, body and spirit. Here are a few locations that are grid-free or close to it as reported by MSN and the Seattle Times.

Grid-Free is Eco-Friendly

There are a few different ways to step out of the blur of mainstream existence and into off the grid living. The best part is that once you go rogue, you significantly reduce your carbon footprint. Whether you live off the land burning wood for heating and cooking, growing your own food and using flame for light or you join a commune that shares housing, cars and even valuables, waste is reduced, energy is conserved and more is re-used.

Three Rivers Recreation Area (one hour north of Bend, Oregon)

This is actually a gated community nestled along Lake Billy Chinook that does not have any power lines stretched throughout. Instead, each home is self-sustained with solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and well water. A long time resident describes her experience, “You have no idea how bright the stars are,” said Mary Johnson, 69, who bought property at Three Rivers in 1975. “No sirens, no trains. I would not live anywhere else.”

Dancing Rabbit (near the northeastern Iowa border)

This is an eco-village of about seventy people that are made up of midwives, builders, massage therapists and more. April Morales, part of the Dancing Rabbit outreach program describes the goals of this unique community as to, “live ecologically sustainable and socially rewarding lives and to share the skills and ideas behind that lifestyle”.

Greater World Community (near Taos, New Mexico)

This community prides themselves on living in ‘Earthship’ homes. These homes are made of recycled materials such as used tires, bottles, cans, scrap metal, reclaimed wood and natural mud plaster. Power comes from solar and wind and all water is caught from rain or snow.

Earthaven (Black Mt., N.C.)

An independent-income community, residents here join one of three pay-to-live tiers. By pooling together money and work hours they are able to sustain a successful off-the-grid living experience that is powered by solar and a local stream micro-hydro system.

Going green off the grid is a way of living that challenges modern lifestyle inasmuch that those who choose it do so with great responsibility. They not only help save our planet, they forego so many conveniences that have sucked the gumption out of generations before them.

And since we couldn’t figure out how they were making it in to the house in the first place, it was kind of hard to plug up the hole.  Of course, there was always the danger that one of the little buggers would actually find his/(hers/its?) way back out to the nest with a stray grain of rice and announce to the whole world that there is FOOD TO BE HAD! in this direction, but the chances were pretty slim.  However, ants also leave trails so that others can follow, so I knew that my little Lewis and Clarks were merely the tip of the exploration iceberg and that, sooner or later, the inevitable “westward migration” would occur.  So I figured I should probably get around to putting out some ant bait.  You know—when I got around to it.  Pretty sure I spotted it in the horse trailer a month or so back…  Ummm… what was I saying?

Now I realize that there are some of you who are perfectly happy to live with the “wilderness” when the wilderness chooses to live with you.  I am not of that opinion.  I do not like to share my little domain with critters that:

a.  eat my food

b.  don’t clean up their own messes

c.  carry diseases that could possibly kill me

d.  might bite me

e.  refuse to curl up on my lap and purr while watching TV or chase tennis balls and worship me

And while I know my friend, Carly, would probably gladly die of Hantavirus rather than kill a mouse, I would not.  I think of it this way:  David and I own approximately 100 acres here.  Our house takes up approximately one twentieth of an acre.  This leaves 99 19/20 of an acre for the critters!  That’s 99.95 acres for the fractionally challenged among you who are still reading even after encountering a fraction (bravo for you!).  The others, of course, ran screaming from the room at the first hint of fractionage and are hiding in a darkened closet right now, shivering in terror.

I still hate to poison the ants, so I put this event off as long as possible in the hopes that they would magically just go away.  But they were bad ants.  They told their friends who told their friends and suddenly it was PAR-TAY!!!  I, of course, was oblivious.  I spotted the one ant and ignored it.  Then I spotted a second and a third ant a few minutes later and ignored them.  After the fourth or fifth ant, I got wise and started turning on lights and really looking.  They were everywhere!  This explains why, if my neighbors were nosy enough, and if they had a night spotting scope, they would have seen me hightailing it down to the horse trailer at 10 o’clock at night in my pajamas to dig out the ant poison.

Interestingly enough, when I went outside, they were swarming all over the ground out there also.  Must have been The Night of the Ants.  I was very disappointed, though.  I listened really close, but I couldn’t hear them singing.  You know?  “The ants go marching two by two.  Hurrah! Hurrah!” Apparently, that is merely a myth perpetrated by summer camps and scout troops.  My childhood unravels…

The one plus is that I was able to follow the trail back and find their access hole—under the front door.  So I stuffed a rag in the corner of the door.  Someday, I will probably strategically locate some weather stripping to block this hole.  Someday.  In reality, 20 years from now, there will still probably be a rag shut in the corner of the front door.  If you ever visit me, look for it there.

But the ants haven’t been our only invaders lately.  A couple of weeks ago, we were driving to town and stopped at the Lodge for some reason.  As we sat there, we both noticed that we could smell barbecue.  Yum!  It never occurred to us to wonder why the Lodge might be barbecuing at 6:30 AM.  We noticed it again when we stopped at a stoplight in town.  Wow!  One of these restaurants must be barbecuing also—must be national barbecue week or something.  And it STILL did not occur to us that 7 AM might be a wee bit early in the morning for pork ribs.  It did at the third stoplight.  It finally penetrated our fuzzy brains that WE were the barbecue!

So we stopped and opened the hood and found a veritable beaver dam in the front of our engine—a smoldering beaver dam!

We disassembled half the engine and cleared out the beaver dam and figured it must have been a pack rat since some of the sticks would have challenged your average mouse.  (Or maybe the mice have gotten a hold of a stash of steroids.)  And in our usual fashion, we ignored it after that.  Until David noticed the lovely barbecue smell again the next day on the way to work.  He figured we had missed a few sticks only to find a new and freshly built beaver dam under the hood.  This went on three days running.  And so it was war!  Again, I absolutely despise killing critters if I can possibly avoid it, but I have to draw the line somewhere.  I’d like to think that line is somewhere this side of my car bursting into flames as I drive into town!

We didn’t have any traps big enough to catch a pack rat, so we decided to use bait.  I popped the hood on the 4runner to find a lovely nest made out of insulation scavenged from under my hood sitting right on top of the engine.  So I cleared the nest out and replaced it with a bait tray.  Our new truck didn’t have any obvious nests, but the insulation had also been chewed on, so it got a bait tray also, as did the Camry.  This explains why there is a post-it note on the back door stating emphatically REMOVE MOUSE BAIT!  Look for that on your visit as well.

The next morning, all of the bait was gone and there were new nests in the vehicles.  Huh?  Apparently, (according to the label) this poison could take a few days to work, adding heavily to my already huge load of guilt over our terrible treatment of the wildlife.  This went on about three days running—bait gone—new nests.  Then David thought to disassemble the Camry’s air intake because we have found nests there in the past, and what did he find?  That’s right!  Most of the bait.  Apparently, the little blighters thought they’d stash a bunch of it in there for later—either that or they are hoping to kill us with the fumes from the mouse bait because they weren’t successful in their first attempt at catching the car on fire.  My friend Carly would be cheering for the mice and/or pack rats at this point if she wasn’t still shivering in the closet over the fraction.  However, tragically, for the mice or pack rats, they snacked a bit as they were stashing and in a few more days, we finally managed to claim the exclusive use of our vehicles once again.

I guess it’s one of those inevitable struggles of rural living.  After all, it was their home before it became ours.  On the other hand, I strongly suspect that the critter load on our 100 acres was not nearly as high as it is now that we’ve come along and provided food (hay) and water.  In fact, I would venture to guess that the critters are quite far ahead of the game here.  They even have their own water with a stick strategically placed so that they can climb out of it if they fall in.  I got tired of fishing dead rabbits, squirrels and mice out of my horse troughs and dog water dishes.  And if you examine the hay in my stack, you can see the places where the rabbits have chewed away at the bottom bales for the last year or so.   I’d love to hear them discussing this year’s crop.  “Do you think she’ll buy us any alfalfa this year?”  (Maybe they’d like some Trix.)

A few years ago, I declared war on the ground squirrels.  They have an exasperating habit of placing their holes right next to the foundations of my horse stalls.  They actually came up right in the middle of Dolly’s stall, but the mat was so heavy, they couldn’t work their way out from under it and gave up—and left a giant hole in the middle of the stall!  You don’t see it under the mat, but it is a booby trap awaiting the unsuspecting visitor.  We have this big juniper tree next to the arena and the squirrels spend all summer stripping it of berries and, presumably, storing them underground somewhere.  Either that, or somewhere on my property, there is a ground squirrel run gin factory that I have never stumbled upon.  Each time I walk by the tree no less than 8-10 squirrels bail out —another 8-10 of them don’t bother to bail—they just stay perched up there looking like live Christmas ornaments and laughing at me!

Anyway, my plan of combat was to get a couple of feral cats.  Their names were Romeo and Juliet.  I know—awwwww…  Romeo, apparently, had been handled as a kitten and was pretty friendly while Juliet was wild as a march hare.  They set up shop in the rafters of our tractor shed and I kept food and water for them in my little stack yard where they could be safe to eat.  They were cute and entertaining and I was even able to get Juliet to be near me, even if I couldn’t ever touch her.  And they did their job, which was to keep down the squirrel population.  They also kept down the lizard population, the rabbit population, the snake population, the mouse population, the bird population, and the pack rat population.  I wasn’t so thrilled about losing ALL of my critters, but figured the trade was worth it if I didn’t have to do combat with the packrats and mice for the vehicles or worry about breaking a leg in one of my stalls.  Unfortunately, the tale of Romeo and Juliet—cat version—also ended tragically.  I had had them a little over a year when the coyotes got them both.  I wasn’t entirely surprised that they got Romeo because he was a bit laid back.  I suspect that Juliet went off looking for her Romeo because she disappeared the day after he did—very Shakespeare!

Anyway, since then, the critter populations have all bounced back tremendously.  I currently frighten away no less than 4-6 rabbits almost every time I feed—and those are the ones hanging out in the stack yard.  They are all over the property.  You can see them hopping and bouncing and just generally frolicking about everywhere.  I feel a little like Lady Tottington in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.  Where are Wallace and Gromit with a giant vacuum when I need them?  There are also birds nesting in the rafters of the tractor shed now, lizards skittering around the back porch and we even found a rather somnolent and angry snake in the tractor shed the other day with a mouse sized lump in its belly.  So it’s all good, except for the poor cats.  I don’t plan to get anymore any time soon—I have made my peace with the squirrels (for the most part).  They coyotes are still around also—naturally, they are pleased with the smorgasbord I have provided them.

I’ve been thinking about rigging up one of my barrels as the ultimate humane mouse trap.  Put one of those humane one way live traps through a hole and seal it up really well so mice could get in, but not back out.  If I used a large enough trap, I could probably even catch pack rats.  I’d set it up on the driveway where we park the cars.  I could give them food and water through the top of the barrel and when I had enough in there, I could transport them elsewhere and release them.  Perhaps my crazy neighbor Tom is feeling lonely…

Sun, sun, sun, here comes the sun.

We woke up to clear skies and a light frost on the lawn. How wonderful to feel the Sun’s energy warming my bones. Once upon a time I lived alone in a yurt in the high desert of New Mexico at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  The temperature at 8,000 feet above sea level had a seasonal swing from -20F in the dead of winter to +110F in the midst of high summer. I cooked on a wood-fired range, read by kerosene lamp and waited with frozen breath every morning for the Sun to rise over the peaks. I slept in longjohns with an Ecuadorian knitted ear-flap hat jammed over my head. During winter nights I arose every 3 hours in order to place another log on the fire to keep us from freezing to death. My hands now bear the long scars from where my flesh sizzled against the hot iron as I chucked in another log. I was so sleepy I did not even feel its burning until I awoke the next morning. I would rise at 5am in the pre-dawn light, stoke the range, put on a kettle of water for coffee, then peel the covers off the windows and crawl back into bed with the dogs to wait for the warmth. The vinyl windows would be covered in whorls of frost. I watched from under the covers as the Sun streaked out from behind the violet peaks to the east and melted the icy ferns revealing the glory of the next day I was alive. Each piercing ray that entered the yurt was a laser beam of heat. I never take the Sun for granted and like my ancestors before me respect its power to keep the planet alive and thriving.

Today is finally the Purple Asparagus day! Hoorah!!!! We have kept them in stasis in our cold office by burying them temporarily in trays of sterile compost covered by newspaper. Despite this the first purple spear has poked up underneath the newspaper and I am concerned that we have fouled this up by the weather’s timing. So today with the warmth of the Sun we shall set up the beds and plant the crowns. What better day than one dedicated to Tauropolos the Cretan bull goddess, to work the land?

We are planting on top of the soil. First we laid a thick layer of newspaper over the existing cut lawn. Then we covered that with 3 inches of mushroom compost. Small mounds were made on top of that and the roots of each crown carefully spread out like the spokes of a wheel.

I made sure to cut off any damaged or dried up roots and watered over them before Himself covered them with another 3-4 inches of compost. We also sprinkled in bone meal to help encourage root growth. We have not yet had the slab wood delivered so the full amount of compost will not be added until the boxes are built around the beds. They don’t look like much but give it a week. All of the crowns already had the first sprouting buds of baby asparagus forming; note the tiny white tip poking up in the centre.

The other day I was seduced by more potatoes. I was in a garden store and came upon a yellow Mayan Gold. I love Yukon Golds but have not found them here. So the next best thing could be the Mayan Gold with its reputation for rich flavour and lovely texture. They are the gnarly chitted ones in the foreground. I also succumbed to Belle de Fontenay which Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall touts as a delicious salad potato with a waxy texture. I am a sucker for a waxy potato. They are the long smooth ones behind.

Mayan Golds & Belle de Fontenays

Oh Hugh! you spudly tempter. Once again you have led me astray. This means we now have 5 potato varieties going in the ground; Charlotte, Belle de Fontenay, Mayan Gold, Maris Piper and Pink Fir Apple.  How bad could that be? I just know that they will be delicious when sautéed in butter with our Red-Veined Sorrel and Langor Shallots in a warm salad.

I am a fallen woman.

CTD; £20.60

Seed Potatoes £8.00 average £0.24 per seed potato

21 bags of Compost for Asparagus £12.60

20 Asparagus crowns already accounted for at £1.62/crown

The high cost of the asparagus is merited by its potentially long term yields.

Lincoln Estates 1000 Acres, Many Potential Uses, includes 2540 Acre Feet of Ground Water Rights.
Rainbow Canyon Live Stream runs through property with surface water rights 1873 priority dates!
Flatnose Ranch 680 Acres Alfalfa
Mathews Farm 266 acres between Caliente and Panaca in Lincoln County
Adams Peak Alfalfa Farm 1600 Irrigated Alfalfa Acres
Diamond Springs Ranch 33, 000 acres BLM Range Leases, and 1000 Acres Deeeded, Nice Cattle Operation
Eden Valley Alfalfa Farm 4.5 Sqaure Miles of deeded Alfalfa Farm with 18 Pivots, Approx 2300 Irrigated Acres
Small acreage land parcels also available in Lincoln County Nevada with three acres starting at $15,000.
Nice home site, room for animals, garden, orchard, beautiful views of Meadow Valleyand PanacaSummit Mountainsto the East. Located in Lincoln County, NVbetween Caliente and 6.5 miles South of Shell Station in Panaca on West side of Hwy 93. Less than a tank of gas from Las Vegas. Needs well and septic, for more information call Chris W Miller 435-862-5951
Domestic wells in Nevadaare allowed to pump up to two acre feet of water per year, that is over 50,000 gallons per month for domestic use. Call Chris for a list of local well drillers to get more information.
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I decide that today will be a “cookie” walk.  Usually I don’t carry cookies , but I have found that if I do an occasional cookie walk—where I stuff my pockets full of goodies and let them know it—the effect lasts a good long time.  And for these girls at least, I guess hope springs eternal because they generally stay with me even when they know I don’t have anything.  They must figure I have the power to magically conjure cookies on a moments notice, so they’re not taking any chances.  Only they have to earn their cookies.  They have to go off and graze, then put effort into coming back to me—only then do they get the reward.

I let them out, and Annie immediately begins shadowing me.

“Cookie?” is her obvious question.

“No cookie,” I say, gently shooing her away.

Dolly closes in from the other side “Did you give Annie a cookie?  Because I want one too then!”

“No cookie,” I repeat, gently shooing her the other way “ you have to earn them.”

So we wander down the ridge and they finally begin moving off to look for the clumps of dried grass that are still hiding among the sagebrush.  As we leave our property, Dolly stays behind to munch on some weeds then trots to catch up.  I reward her with a cookie.  Annie trots over indignant, so she earns one also.  It becomes a competition between them.  They watch each other as closely as they watch me.

We reach the bluff that overlooks a large wash.  It is a short steep drop into the wash proper.  The girls stop to graze on some nice clumps of grass at the top of the bluff.  As I slither down the hill, I wonder how long it will be before the angry scars of recent flash flooding will fade away.  The hillside is cut by dozens of parallel erosion channels leading down into the wash.  The wash itself is a mess.  Where there used to be a soft sandy floor, there is only hardpan and harsh gravel.  The banks no longer slope easily, but are cut deep and jagged.  I hear both Dolly and Annie clattering down the bank behind me.  Dolly finishes with a flourish by cantering through the sagebrush and coming to a screeching halt beside me.

“Cookie?”  Yep.

We choose to cross this wasteland and seek the nicer footing above the far bank.   Dolly gives a little hop and halfhearted trot—sorry, not enough effort.  We continue across the wash to the far bluff where there is an abundance of bunch grass.  Both Dolly and Annie know this place and immediately tuck in.  I find a nice rock halfway up the bluff and sit to enjoy the world around me for a while.   Grey clouds punctuate a crystal clear winter sky.  To the west are the strato-cumulus, soft and fluffy, but to the east are dark grey lenticulars, sculpted into fantastic shapes by the winds aloft.   It is the golden hour where the quality of light is at its best.  The sky to the east appears to be a darker shade of blue even though the sun is still above the horizon.

If I had enough talent to write poetry, this is the time and place I would most like to write about.  Too often, people mistake the desert for a barren wasteland, but it is not so.  Down below me, there is a sandy channel with the tracks of the hundreds of small animals who call this little area home.  There are ground squirrels and chipmunks and a whole multitude of rabbits living here along with dozens of lizards, their tails marking their tracks as reptilian in origin.  It is too cold for lizards or their shyer cousins the snakes right now, but during the summer, they dash away in all directions as I walk through.  There is a large covey of quail that roam this area and will sometimes explode in all directions when I venture too near. Their tracks are all there, telling me stories about the lives they lead.

In addition, there are the larger animals that prey on all of this fare—the coyotes, hawks and eagles that I will occasionally spot as I walk or ride the horse.  One of the most amazing things I have seen is a Golden Eagle taking wing from about ten feet away when I startled it away from a rabbit it was eating.  And there are the unseen animals—the pocket gophers and packrats and mice who only make their presence known by causing a mess in my haystack or horse trailer.   I have even spotted a few foxes over the years, though usually late at night when I was driving home.  They live there, all of these animals, because there is plenty of food in the form of bitterbrush, pine nuts, and the seeds of the many grasses and flowers that grow abundantly here if you know where and when to look for them.

Annie stops by for a scratch.  She knows I won’t give her a cookie, but she will stop by for a scratch just in case I make the offer.  She enjoys the scratch almost as much as the cookie anyway.  Dolly is slowly moving up the bluff now, so I climb to the top.  She canters the last few strides and earns another cookie.  Annie, of course gets hers as well.  We decide to head downhill today and make a big loop around to the left that will bring us back home.

Suddenly, a flock of birds rises out of the sagebrush and flows downhill like quicksilver.  The sun glints brightly off of their wings and they make a high pitched “chee, chee, chee…” as they fly.  Then another flock and another, rising with one fluid motion, then flying nap of the earth, skimming the top of the sagebrush in ever widening circles until it looks like a giant maelstrom of tiny birds.  And then they disappear, settling back into the sagebrush as suddenly as they ascended—invisible again to the outside world.

We find another patch of nice grass to graze on for a bit, then I continue to move off to the west.  There is too much grass here, though, and Dolly is thinking about ignoring me and moving away into better grazing so I move off in the opposite direction.  I find an unexpected ally in Annie who sees her chance to hog a few cookies as she follows me.  She almost makes it, but at the last moment, Dolly gallops after me and catches up just before Annie does.  They both get two cookies for leaving such good grass to be with me.  As I continue to walk down slope, paralleling the wash, Dolly canters off to the right, then circles around to stop right in front of me again—I think she has the idea!

I keep trying to get one or the other of them to pose for a picture with the big lenticular behind them against the bright blue sky, but they don’t cooperate.  We finally cross the wash again about a half a mile below where we did earlier and continue south towards home.  As we walk, we pass the “sheepherder shacks.”  David and I call them that because the sheepherders sometimes camp there, although we don’t know what their original purpose was or who built them.  Dolly is always fascinated by the junk that is laying around loose near the shacks.  Today, she noses at an old hunk of plywood on the ground as the sun finally slips behind the mountains.  Soon, we won’t even have time for this luxury after school.  Our walks will range closer to home if we can take them at all.  For now it is enough to enjoy the perfect twilight and the companionship of our little herd.

Now, your normal trip to the dump does not always precipitate a house cleaning on my part, but this trip happened to coincide with my reaching critical mass.  I don’t know how you clean your house, but the “Critical Mass Method” is how I clean my house.  This is the method whereby you keep noticing the clutter but not doing anything about it until one day, you get tired of looking at all the little dead bug bodies on the bathroom counter and actually begin cleaning something.

My mother-in-law, on the other hand uses the Good Housekeeping approved method of actually cleaning the dirt up when she sees it.  She is the absolute stereotypical, cliché, sitcom mother-in-law.  Her house looks like the staff from Architectural Digest, or maybe Sunset Magazine just finished up a photo shoot, only you never see them because she made them hide, along with all of their equipment, in the closet when she saw you coming up the driveway so the place wouldn’t look cluttered.  This is how she operates:  Say she is sitting innocently on the toilet doing what people normally do there and she looks up and notices a cobweb in the corner of the bathroom.  She will immediately (upon finishing her business) proceed to find a long handled brush or let’s say a small shop vac, which is what I would use.  But let’s say the shop vac is in the garage because my father-in-law has been using it to vacuum his boat, which is where it would be in my house.  She will immediately ask him in strenuous tones to indicate that this is IMPORTANT to please bring it into the house so that she can remove the cobweb.  He will do so (muttering under his breath because all of the Soule men mutter under their breath when put upon by their wives), and he will gallantly remove the cobweb himself because the Soule men are gallant that way.   My Mother-in-law will then suggest that next time he makes a trip to Home Depot (they don’t shop at Wal-Mart) maybe he should buy his own shop vac to keep in the garage strictly for boat vacuuming purposes.

This is how it works in my house.  I will notice as I am sitting on the toilet that there is a cobweb (usually it includes a spider in my house) in the corner.  I will think, “huh, there is a cobweb in the corner.”

I will immediately forget about the whole thing until the next time I use the bathroom.  You see, I’m okay with the spider unless it decides it’s a good idea to move into my shower.  I have been carefully weeding out the spider gene pool to remove the shower-dwelling gene for several years now and I think I’m beginning to have some success at that.  So the spider is really only in danger if I get the shop vac to clean up the cobwebs because then, it just makes sense to remove the spider as well.  In fact, the spider has a better than even chance of living a long and healthy life in my bathroom corner because the next thing that happens is that one day, I accidently happen to notice that the shop vac is not in the closet where it belongs.

Several days (or maybe years) after this, I will actually ask David where the shop vac is.  He will tell me it is in the garage because he has been using it to vacuum his boat and I will say in a very non-strenuous tone “huh, well if you get a chance, bring it in the house so I can use it sometime.”

Then one day as I am walking into the living room, I will trip over the shop vac and think “huh, David moved that into the house.”

Then, finally, after much time has passed, after I have tripped over the shop vac 47,000 times, after the spider has died of old age and is just a desiccated little exoskeleton hanging limply from one of the now multitude of cobwebs draped artfully around my bathroom to the envy of haunted house designers everywhere, I will reach critical mass and I will know that it is time to clean the house.

Only I don’t have time to clean the house…  So I will think about cleaning the house—while I am off riding at a clinic or on the Alzheimer’s ride—while I am off sailing with David on the Delta or Tahoe—while I am visiting my mom—while I am at work.  Until finally, one weekend, the stars align and I need to go to the dump anyway and my horse is lame and David has gone off hiking and I have time—and THEN and ONLY THEN, will I clean the house.

The cleaning itself is pretty unremarkable.  There is the usual amount of windex and pledge involved.  But most of what makes up cleaning in my house is REMOVING CLUTTER  (so having this coincide with a dump trip is a pretty good idea).  Only a portion of the clutter actually goes to the dump.  Most of the clutter is just stuff that has managed to crawl out of whatever place it actually belongs so that it can commune with the other clutter on some flat surface.  Right now, if you go into my laundry room, you will find at least two of my ball caps on the counter or on top of the dryer.  Why aren’t they hanging neatly on their hooks?  Good question.  And there are at least 10 pairs of shoes there.  This might make sense in some cultures, but at least 6 pairs of them ought to be in the bedroom closet.  Coffee table?  Books that ought to be on the book shelves.  Dining room table?  David’s sailing/camping stuff that has inexplicably clawed its way out of its storage container and is attempting to scuttle off of the table and into whatever dark corners it can find.

And the knick-knacks!  There is the decorative Grappa bottle displayed in the living room waiting, I presume, to be joined by other decorative Grappa bottles in the future.  I have to ask myself why I would want to broadcast how much Grappa I drink to casual visitors (one bottle folks—it is still waiting!).  I have to ask myself if I can really drink enough Grappa to make up a collection worth talking about after I get out of rehab and assuming I haven’t just blacked out the entire concept of collecting Grappa bottles.  I have to ask myself if I shouldn’t just recycle it right now and get it over with!

Which brings us to my Mother-in-law’s deepest darkest cleaning secret.  She CONTROLS CLUTTER (with an iron fist)!  If you look in any one of her closets, you will find where all of her clutter hides—banished there along with the Sunset photographers and their equipment.  Every few months, her house has a new “theme” wherein she allows certain items of clutter a reprieve from the dark, as it were, and banishes the old theme items to the closet.  If I were to pull this off, I would need about 8 more closets!  Still, I often think maybe I should spend about an hour once a week banishing clutter—hahahahahahahahaha…

Another thing that happens to me in the fall—usually in early October is that I have to start going down to feed in the dark every morning.  It is then that I am reminded how much I love the waning moon.  It lights my morning excursions to the corrals as long as there are no clouds out.  I have a game I play where I see how little I have to use my flashlight.  For the week after the full moon, I rarely use it at all.  I revel in the almost daylight and marvel at the strength of the shadow it casts.  I use a small light in the hay barn, but navigate to feed through the corrals easily in the glow of moonlight.  As the moon narrows below half in the second week, the light becomes dimmer and dimmer and I have to use my flashlight to get through the rough spots on the trail or risk breaking an ankle.   Finally, it narrows to a mere sliver which amazingly still casts a shadow, but forces me to use my barn spotlights to get around the corrals as I feed.  Even then, Annie who is out of range of the spotlight appears only as a dark shadow, hiccupping in her eagerness to be fed.

Once I finish feeding, I head back up to the house.  My eyes have adjusted almost fully to the darkness by then and it is even easier to walk without light.  It is a good thing the road is fairly smooth here as I am usually gazing at the stars as I walk back.  Orion hangs high in the western sky, locked in eternal battle with Taurus, heralding the approaching advent of winter.  Venus is there, too, perched over the mountains. Often, I will see the steady dim light of a satellite streaming past way overhead.  Several times now, I am pretty sure I’ve seen the International Space Station go by.  It was too bright and too low for a satellite, too steady and too fast for an airplane.   And the Leonids!  It is early, but they are beginning now.  Some mornings I see only one or two quick streaks, but others, there will be 3, 4, even more meteorites dashing across the northern sky.  Sometimes, I stop and try to take it all in.  I try to pick out all of the stars in the Little Dipper, or even more challenging, all seven of the Pleiades.  Even the dim glow of lights from Carson City and Reno are enough to make this difficult.  I love to feel the chill eastern breeze on my face knowing that winter is coming soon.

The moon is gone now.  I am forced to rely on artificial light for the next two weeks until it returns.  The stargazing and the Meteor showers will get better, but it is not such a friendly place out there when the best I can do is poke at the darkness with my ineffectual flashlight beam, pushing it back in one direction while it closes in in another.  It used to creep me out, walking around in the dark imagining mountain lions behind every tree, but now I merely embrace it as part of the cycle.  We will repeat this cycle, the moon and I, waxing and waning, waxing and waning, as the winters themselves wax and wane throughout the cycle of our lives.  Until one day, as I’m heading back from feeding, I will slowly realize that rather than my eyes adjusting, the light itself is softly returning.  By then, Orion will be fading into the east, waving goodbye to me for another year.

The Moon’s the North Wind’s cooky.
He bites it, day by day,
Until there’s but a rim of scraps
That crumble all away.

The South Wind is a Baker.
He kneads clouds in his den,
And bakes a crisp new moon that…greedy
North…Wind…eats…again!

Vachel Lindsay

A typical trip to the feed store:
Me:  What is that implement thing out there on display?
Feed store guy:  It’s a Lurminator.
Me:  I need one.  What does it do?
Feed store guy:  It Lurminates.
Me:  How much does it cost?
Feed Store Guy:  $700
Me:  Here is my credit card.

After this, I go on my merry way, secure in the knowledge that A.  If I ever need to Lurminate, I will possess the correct implement and B.  Any tractor implement under $1000 is worth having.

We bought this blade.  But it couldn’t be just any blade.  David did his research and it had to be a Swiss Army Blade that will not only fold, spindle and mutilate, but has those teeny-beeny tweezers in a pocket so that you can pull out any annoying little splinters.  And we bought an auger, which it turns out consists of several parts (sold separately) such as the “arm thing” and the “spinny things,” which come in several different sizes—small, medium, tall, venti, and ridiculous.  Buying an “arm thing” without at least two “spinny things” is kind of like buying Malibu Barbie without also buying the Malibu Convertible, Malibu Ken, Malibu Beach Mansion and optional Malibu Sunglasses (for both Barbie and Ken, naturally).

So we drove home triumphantly from the Tractor Supply Company store with our latest kill and, somehow, David managed to assemble the whole shebang.  (Little known fact:  Albert Einstein died of old age while trying to assemble the “arm thing” for his tractor.)  And we drove the tractor to a place on our property that I had scientifically determined would be the absolutely correct place to put a fence post and we drilled our first hole!  And it was one foot deep… Because after the auger went down about a foot, it hit a layer of soil that geologists refer to as “concrete,” and then it just sat there spinning happily away, but not actually doing anything useful in terms of what geologist refer to as “digging a hole.”  And now you know why I hate my crazy neighbor.  I am quite certain that he is down there living in his disgusting, filthy trailer with his stallions running around loose because he has crappy falling down fences, looking through his expensive high powered telescope at us struggling to dig post holes—and LAUGHING AT US!  I’ll bet he lets his stallions out every few weeks just so he can come up and laugh at our feeble efforts at erecting a fence to keep them out.

At first, we worked really hard at this project.  We would dig any time we had a spare day.  We began by drilling the 12” holes for the big posts that would be our corners and gate supports.  These holes needed to be 4 feet deep, so you can see that a 1 foot hole just wasn’t going to cut it.  We discovered that by pouring water down the 1 foot hole, we could soften up the soil and a few days later, we could drill it all the way down to 15 or even 18 inches deep—progress!  We also discovered that through the use of backbreaking labor with a “rock bar” we could loosen up the soil for the auger and make another inch or two of progress.  And occasionally, we were lucky enough to actually dig an entire hole at which point, we would put a post in it and celebrate.  Our property began to look like we were sprouting a random crop of railroad tie trees.  We also had to purchase an “extension thing” for the auger because, at first, it would not dig a 4 foot hole—silly auger.  (I guess you could call that auger augmentation.)

And we discovered the existence of “shear pins.”   A shear pin is an evil piece of equipment that is designed to protect your auger from being bent (HA! We’ve proved that one wrong) by breaking anytime it thinks the auger might get damaged by hitting a rock or a tree root, or if it’s a little stressed that day, or if it had one too many cups of coffee or has PMS, or somebody sneezes or a rabbit runs in front of the tractor.  We discovered that it is not humanly possible to possess enough shear pins to get through an entire post hole digging operation, because due to Newton’s fourth law of Shear Pins, you will always have one fewer shear pin than you need to finish the hole!  We now measure our hole digging efforts in terms of SPU’s or Shear Pin Units.

“That was an easy hole—it only broke four shear pins!”

And then we stalled out…

And when I say we stalled out, I’m talking about “for several years” stalled out, not just for a couple of weeks or months.  We were killing ourselves physically, not to mention wiping out the shear pin population of Northern Nevada, and we still had some holes that we had made ABSOLUTELY NO progress on.  There were these divots on the ground where holes were supposed to go and that was as far as we could get.  There was one corner post where we had hit a rock about 3 feet down and we absolutely couldn’t get around it without dynamite or some sort of tactical nuclear weapon.  Oh, we had tried a few different “tricks” that our “friends” had told us about.  (Like pouring very diluted battery acid down the hole to dissolve the clay?  Ignoring our fears about poisoning the environment on the theory that it would be worth it to create 6 legged horned toads if we finally had a fence, we tried this—it didn’t do diddly squat.)  We think now that our friends were down at Tom’s using his telescope and laughing along with him.

And then Providence showed us the way…  Our neighbors down the hill decided to put in a fenced yard for their dogs.  They didn’t actually do it themselves—they had some fencing guys do it for them.  I watched this project unfold over several days driving to and from work and finally had to stop and ask—“HOW THE HELL DID THEY DIG THOSE POST HOLES!”  I probably said it a little more nicely than that, but that was the gist of it.  It turned out that they had used a Bobcat.  The difference between the Bobcat and our tractor is that the Bobcat possesses a mysterious, magical force known as downpressure.  This would be like having a second tractor jump up and down on top of the auger while the first tractor was digging the hole—BRILLIANT!

So we rented a Bobcat—actually a “Skid Steer” (because it is made by Case and not Bobcat).  Whatever it was, it was pretty reasonable to rent—only about $100.  Of course, it cost $200 to have it delivered and picked up, and each of the two augers cost about $100 to rent, but it was still worth it.  The Skid Steer had downpressure and it didn’t have any shear pins on the theory that if you got it stuck enough to bend one of these augers, you would create enough force to spin the planet Earth off of it’s axis causing global devastation anyway.  And we dug 52 holes in two days!  I sure hope Tom happened to notice that we were out digging and thinking to have himself a knee slapping afternoon, glanced through his telescope at which point his eyeball must have shot cartoon like out the other end of the telescope in amazement—take THAT!

We don’t, at this point, have any actual fences yet.  All of the wooden posts are in, though.  They march along in straight lines instead of random patterns, beckoning to me.  Now all we have to do is install all of the H’s, drive about a gazillion T-posts and string fence.  And now I can truly say “Thank you Tom, for enabling us to go out and buy a T-post driver implement for our tractor!”

Anyway, apparently God talks to Tom and somewhere along the line God told Tom that he needed to own three horses.  This is according to my other crazy neighbors who have talked to him (and now I mean crazy in the metaphorical sense of “wacky” or “a little off” which are strict requirements on the entrance exam for those moving into our neighborhood).  According to the neighbors, Tom has two grown children hiding out there—I mean living somewhere else—and God told Tom that his children would return to him and they would all need horses to ride.  No one seems to know when this would happen or where God told him to ride the horses or if God told him to ride English or Western or use a bitless bridle or go shod or barefoot or anything interesting like that.  Whatever is supposed to happen hasn’t happened yet and we’ve been here going on ten years now.  So Tom started with one appaloosa mare and (I’m kind of speculating here) bred her to produce a colt?  Then either he bred her again or maybe she bred with her colt?  I don’t like to think about that one, but the end result was another colt.

The problem is that God left out one very important piece of information that belongs in this puzzle.  God forgot to tell Tom to geld these colts.  Tom actually  believes that God has told him it is a sin to geld a horse, which is sort of counterproductive to the situation.  So time passed… and they grew up… and now they are full-grown stallions… and I have a mare… and eventually they figured that out.  So one day, they showed up at our place to “visit” my mare.  They broke her out of her electric corral and fortunately, she was so freaked out about being chased around by two crazed stallions that when I opened the gate of a solid pipe corral, she shot in there as quick as she could to get away from then and I slammed the gate in their faces.  God also seems to have forgotten to tell Tom to teach them manners.  You (metaphorically) could not pay me enough money to stand within 10 feet of one of these horses.  I’m not afraid of them, but I’m not stupid either.   Neither is Tom  (stupid I mean)—he may be crazy, but he is smart enough to know that leaving his horses rampaging around our property might be a bad idea.  He came right away and got them.

Thus began a long cycle of stallion visits from one or the other or even both of the two stallions.  And thus began a series of corral upgrades on my side of things.  Can you see why I love my neighbor now?  Well, first, the horses had to have all pipe corrals—no more electric fence.   So we bought a bunch more pipe fencing.  And they needed better shelters, so we bought two more of those.  The shelters had to be well anchored to prevent them from blowing away which meant digging holes to pour concrete posts to attach the shelter to.  The holes were really hard to dig, and how were we ever going to move the dirt necessary to fill the foundations?  You guessed it—we had to buy a tractor.  Then the whole shootinmatch needed to be enclosed in a perimeter fence so that the stallions could rampage to their heart’s content “over there” and not near my horses.  So I drew up plans to fence off about 10 acres with our little horse area on the inside.  Then we moved our “bathroom shed” which has a composting toilet over to the horse area so I now have a little tack/storage shed, but also a bathroom.  I often feed in the dark in the winter, so David has installed “much needed” lighting.

I have not, yet, figured out how to justify a new saddle or a real hay barn or a new trailer out of this, but I’m working on it.

And for those of you who wonder why I don’t “do” something about the stallions, I don’t have a lot of options.  Fencing them out is the Nevada way of dealing with them.  I could probably shoot one of them and claim self defense and get away with it, but I don’t blame the horses for this situation.  It would be better if I tried to shoot one and missed and “accidentally” hit Tom, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get away with that.  I have offered to pay to have the horses gelded, but Tom just said that God would think that was wrong.  I have even considered offering to buy the two horses and gelding them myself, but I’m pretty sure Tom wouldn’t sell them to me (he’s crazy, not stupid, remember?  He knows the first thing I’d do to them.).  One friend and I came up with a wild scheme to put a loudspeaker under Tom’s trailer and speak to him in the middle of the night:

“TOM! THIS IS GOD!  GELD THE HORSES!”

But hatching that scheme is one thing—carrying it out would make ME certifiable—and I mean that—like literally.

Heck!  Just buying Tigger was a real adventure.  We knew we needed to buy a tractor, so David, my “more of a sitcom husband in real life than anything Hollywood writers could think of” husband did what he always does—he did research.  David’s nickname is “The Research King.”  I can’t tell you how many brochures we have collected over the years for things we will probably never buy because he wanted to know more just in case someday he ever does decide to buy one of those things and thank God we have a brochure for it (if we can actually find the brochure) because it might prevent us from buying the wrong thing and thereby avert almost certain disaster…  When I bought our truck, he called horse trailer dealers all over the west coast and asked them what kind of truck they thought we should buy based on their horse hauling experiences.  You can see why he is the perfect sitcom husband.  Fortunately for us, the Internet has eliminated the need for a larger house to hold all of our brochures.

And the hell of it is that he is right.  I can’t make as much fun of him as I’d like to because he often uncovers facts that help us make better decisions.  So he went on the Internet and decided that we should purchase a Kubota tractor because Kubota is the gold standard of tractors.  They hold their value well, they are widely available and unlike the tractors made in Korea or India or Poland (yes, there are even those), parts and service are widely available and the company (and/or country) doesn’t seem likely to go belly up anytime soon.  We also decided we need something around 45 horsepower to do the work we need done.  So one day, we drove around to tractor dealerships and looked at Kubota’s.  Mostly we looked at new 25 horsepower tractors, because these are what the dealers have in stock.  Seems everybody wants one of those “cute little tractors” not realizing that they can’t do a whole hill of beans unless you are lucky enough to live on, well, a hill of beans which are really easy to dig in.  Plus new 45’s cost a whole lot more.   Hmmm…  Maybe we should be looking for a used tractor?

This is when we discovered one of the absolute truths of tractor ownership.  A certain percentage of tractor buyers are perfectly happy with their 25 horse power tractors because they probably didn’t need to move much dirt anyway and just wanted it to prove to their neighbors that they are real heavy equipment stud muffins.  But the percentage like us—they know what they want—they have work to do—they want a bigger tractor!  So they move up.  The smart ones go sink a boatload of money into a used skip loader or backhoe that a construction company is selling off and are done for life.  Many, though, move up to a 45.  And then they discover?—they want a bigger tractor!  Unfortunately, although you might think the expression “boatload of money” is hyperbole, it is not.  Still, there are a lucky few who will have the wherewithal to move up again and they will sell off their used 45 horsepower tractors.  So there are used 45’s out there to be had, only there is a large segment of dissatisfied 25 horsepower owners out there waiting cat-like, to pounce as soon as they go on the market.  This doesn’t work well for David at all—he likes to think about things.  He likes to do his research.

We had five or six tractors sold out from under us before we could even go look at them.  Soon, we learned the correct language to use:

“Hi, I see you have a used 45 HP tractor for sale.  Here is my credit card number.  Please hold it for me—I’m on the way now.”

We actually found one in San Bernadino.  We were working out the logistics of having it trucked to us.  We faxed the credit application.  The nice lady on the phone said “Okay, everything is in order.  All I need to do now is go look up the serial number of the tractor…”

Um… yeah… she couldn’t find it.  It was filed off.  The tractor was stolen.

Turns out the tractor was stolen when it was brand new.  This was the fourth “owner.”  He had no idea.  But really, the tractor belonged to Kubota.  We wanted it anyway.  Would they sell it to us?  Sort of, but it would take some time to file all of the proper paperwork, blah, blah, blah.  Then… later that same day, another 45 HP tractor came up for sale in Klamath Falls.  We gave them our credit card number, borrowed a truck (too heavy for mine), borrowed a trailer and left for Klamath Falls about 4 the next morning.  By one o’clock, we were the proud owners of Tigger.  About an hour out of Klamath Falls, we stopped to let the dogs pee and David checked that the serial numbers matched—whew!  Not stolen.

Wow!  That’s a whole episode right there.  There will have to be another one where we discover that we “need” at least one of every implement made for a tractor (and how much they cost).  There is definitely an episode about the time we got the auger stuck in the clay and practically had to disassemble the tractor to get it out (and then actually bent the auger).  There has got to be one about all of the crazy things you can do with a tractor that you didn’t think you could do.  And I’m pretty sure there’s an episode entitled “things you should not do with your tractor.”  And if you know anybody who is selling a nice 70 to 100 Horsepower used Kubota, I have a credit card number just waiting for them.

One inverter—all three circuit boards fried

One back-up generator—control board fried.  It has been kind of scary living without back-up power.  The weather keeps telling us clear skies but apparently they forgot to add the sentence “but maybe with some clouds in them,” because we have had several cloudy days in there.  We finally got full power to the batteries on Tuesday so I immediately did the laundry.  David should be able to fix this soon–he finally got the new board today.

Two motion sensor security lights on garage.  These may actually be okay, but the wiring that leads to them is fried.  We won’t know until David rewires that area of the garage.

One florescent light fixture in garage—same scenario as the security lights…

One communications hub that allowed the inverter, charge controllers and mate to talk—fried circuit boards

The oven—inexplicably as it is nowhere near the garage—control board fried.  This fix is not too expensive, but of course, now we are looking at new and better ovens!  I had to do something for a fellow staff member’s birthday this week, so I bought a bunch of cake and frosting mix on sale figuring I would make cupcakes for all the kids.  As I was driving home, I got to do the classic head slap doubletake–no oven!  Duh…  So I made a special trip to CostCo Sunday to buy a cake, and I still have enough cake mix to make cupcakes for the whole school if the oven ever gets fixed.  Now all I need is a reason…

One solar panel (Thank God only one)—not sure if this was an arc from the main bolt that shattered the glass or the surge coming up the wires from the garage.  Anyway, replacing one solar panel turns out to be nearly impossible because you can never find one that matches, so this one has us almost completely stumped.  David and his friend, Greg, are thinking of trying to repair the panel just to see if they can, but ultimately we may end up having to replace the entire array.

The mate maybe?  Still not sure about that…  (The mate is a little device that lets you talk to the charge controllers, inverter, generator, Skipper, movie star, professor and Marianne, millionaire and his wife.)

A few shingles on the garage roof

The dryer still works, but it doesn’t shut off anymore.  It finishes its cycle, buzzes to tell you it’s done, then continues to spin and blow cold air until you stop it or (presumably) lightening strikes again and knocks out the power.

So far, the bill to repair all of this is still lower than our deductible, so no, insurance will not cover it.  We are looking into installing a lightening rod.

But the Honda generator is still chugging happily away!

So there we were, just me and the bunnies in a bizarre Mexican standoff reminiscent of some cheesy horror flick.  They were probably just having a little bunny confab out there in the middle of the road when I came driving along and they turned to see what the all the noise was.  I prefer the horror movie version, though.  You hear the haunting Ennio Morricone score in the background as the bunnies stare, their lucky little feet hovering over imaginary little holsters, the jingling of tiny spurs in the background.  The camera pans and then it zooms to show only my eyes—wide, afraid, darting back and forth between the bunnies.  Then the camera pans back to show the center bunny.  It zooms in to show just his eyes.  He wiggles his cute little nose and the spell breaks.  The movie ends.  They run away.

Lately, I see half a dozen, even a dozen each morning.  They dash along the side of the road seeking a way to escape me, but perversely choose to stay on the road rather than flee into the sagebrush.  Usually, they “try to escape” by running in front of the car.   It is the running of the bunnies—far safer than bulls at any rate.  This morning I counted 9, although only one of them foolishly tried to get me to run over it.  I really do try to avoid them.  One time late at night on a trip home from Vegas, I hit one coming over Anchorite Pass out of Hawthorne.  I can still hear the sickening crunch it made—ick!  It happened so fast that there was no way I could have avoided it, but still—ick!  I don’t want to repeat that so I drive slow and try to avoid them.

Is it because it is fall?  It doesn’t really make sense because they don’t hibernate.  Is there a shortage of food this late in the year?  But there is certainly no food on the road to attract them.   It’s not mating season… I mean I could see the males showing off for the females…”check this out babe!”  (It would certainly narrow the gene pool to those that are the fastest and/or least foolish.)  But it’s the wrong time of year for that.  Is the road surface warmer?  Maybe running alongside a car warms their little tootsies.   Maybe it’s just National Bunny Deathwish Month.  Silly rabbits!

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One of the most appealing aspects of the new Laneway House movement in Vancouver BC is the opportunity to build in a new way using low environmental impact technologies.  While ‘The Not So Big House’ book managed to bring the small house to the popular imagination in 2001, building small, efficient dwellings goes back to our first neolithic efforts to create shelter. To their credit Vancouver’s early (post neolithic) Laneway builders, like Smallworks, have made significant progress in going green by using heat recovery ventilation and many other green technologies.  Yet a truly ‘off the grid’ option has not been achieved and is not even allowed within the current by-laws.  As such, EcoDensity is more about density and less about Eco than the name implies.

To address this discrepancy the City of Vancouver must make good on the environmental potential of Laneway Houses.  A simple way to envisage this change is to treat the LH as an Urban Cottage. Like its country cousin the Urban Cottage would be designed for almost  complete self sufficiency and shoot for net zero water and energy consumption. Not only does this make the Vancouver Laneway house far more sustainable, it also addresses the high costs incurred for hook ups to city sewer and power grids.  So, as usual, environmental and fiscal sustainability are closely related. Treating the Laneway house like a Gulf Island cottage has other benefits.  As we add more and more density we need to build larger and increasingly costly infrastructure to accommodate this growth.  But if the added density is ‘off the grid’ then this endless upgrade cycle can be avoided.  It’s a proverbial win win as both the city and its citizens save money and the environment at the same time.  BUT….the current regulatory regime does not allow it.  So how do we achieve what we all agree is a worthy goal?

The sheer volume of regulations stacked against off-the-grid power, water and especially sewage treatment is very daunting.  Suffice to say it would take a massive bureaucratic effort to overcome these obstacles, but it is a mistake to think that we can overcome them one regulation at a time.  First we need to change the current regulatory mindset and create a sense of mission that goes beyond elected officialdom.  Remember, its taken a long time and a lot of expertise to achieve the health and safety gains that these regulations embody.  But it is not a  matter of falling short of those laudable intentions.  Rather it is a matter of going beyond them to include a larger vision of health and safety that includes the future of our global environment.  An off-the-grid urban cottage does just that by asking nothing for itself… literally.  That ‘nothing’ includes virtually no impact on its site while adding valuable density.  This may seem like an awful lot of global environmental weight to put on a cute little Laneway house but why not?  They’re already half way to being sustainable by being small, so let’s finish the job.

The Urban Cottage also ties in nicely with the practice of urban agriculture to further increase self sufficiency. Also, as a ‘Failure to Launch Pad’ it will at least feel more isolated from the mother ship albeit conceptually.  A Laneway version of Walden Pond or better yet a water detention moat, would also help.  At any rate, it’s hard to imagine a more snug or smug person than the new urban cottager rising each day to a cup of solar heated, shade grown, free-trade coffee before getting to work in their home based electronic cottage industry.  Zero net water, zero net power, zero net travel and zero net hassle.

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We are leaving earlier than planned because my parents stairs are being torn out on Monday.  I got a good deal for a hotel on Monday night about 1/3 of the way home, and in the process of booking one ( http://www.priceline.com/ ) for Tuesday.  I’ll have 2 500-600km days and 1 300ishkm day alone with the 3 wild boys.  Should be fun.  We have a hot dog roast planned with good friends for lunch on Monday 2 hours into the drive.

I am nervous.  Oh yes I am.  When I left, it was dark, rainy, I felt terrible.  The laundry was overwhelming onces the days got colder and muddier.  On more than one occassion I filled every single washing machine in the Castlegar Laundrymat.  !On the upside- the laundrymat has free wifi so I aim to post at least 1x a week from there

There is gravity fed water in the yard now.  Wedged into the crack of our hand thrown Magician Creek.  The water comes out so crytal clear and tastes like magic, or well, nothing.  I am not actually sure if I am okay with this or not.  A) I said I wasn’t going back until the pump was in for the well and we had running water and B) this divertes the water from our little garden pond and dammit, that’s my secret garden go dig your own mother effing water supply!  But then, I would rather not haul water from the neighbours well than have a pond.  Le sigh.  I have no idea if Mr.T has purchased a pump or not.  We speak briefly every 4-5 days when he calls from a payphone or a friend’s house.  I get the odd email.  I have to not really think about it, because I worry about him falling out of a tree or lighting a forest fire ( he assures me he can put out the fires he starts with a shovel.)

So there is that.  We have a small black hose with potable water running constantly in the yard.

I have no idea where our new woodstove is- if Mr.T has picked it up, or if it is still in Castlegar.

I have no idea if our new big! propane generator is going yet. 

I have no idea if there has been a pump purchased, or if a plumber has been found.

I actually have no idea what the new steps up to the Yurt look like.

And he has no idea we will be there on Wednesday.  Last we spoke I told him Friday.

!Wednesday should be interesting

Hey darlin’- if you read this before I get home, we will be there on Wednesday now and uhh, can you please make sure the composting toilet is shovelled out before we get there?

A battery/solar panel system provides the electricity, with a propane generator automatically starting and charging the batteries when the sun does not shine enough to keep them fully charged. Operating this system costs a fraction of the cost for conventional utilities. Heating comes from a wood-burning stove and fireplace. Water, collected from a rain-catch water system and natural seepage from underground water sources, goes into an underground cistern and then a large holding tank adjacent to the cabin via a deep-well solar pump. The cook stove, refrigerator, and hot-water heater all use propane and function as well as electric appliances. By following a few basic tips, anyone can live this innovative lifestyle.

First, test the water on your land and consult with local officials and laboratories about the results. Clean water remains a primary concern in the wilderness, where no access to pre-established plumbing exists. Learn the basics of home water-treatment and the devices that make water treatment possible. Understand how a home water-system functions, even if you create one with the help of professionals.

When living off the grid, knowledge becomes your best friend. You must intimately acquaint yourself with Mother Nature. In addition, estimate your energy consumption as accurately as possible and adopt a system that will furnish an adequate amount. If water runs nearby, look into hydroelectric systems. Otherwise, wind turbines harness a great deal of energy, and many households function off solar panels alone. Plan and prepare.

With enough forethought, anyone can live off the grid with the same amenities that others enjoy. For a more in-depth view of off-the-grid living, check out the following video:

I looked up from writing. My seven-year-old daughter stood beside me, looking at me with pleading eyes. My younger daughter and my husband were napping and I had hoped to crack out a blog post while the house was quiet. I mumbled something about “in a little while”, which in Laura-lingo translates to “in about an hour or so.” (I lose track of time when I’m writing.)

“We haven’t played together in years.” Her lower lip pooched out.

“In years?” That had to be an exaggeration.

“Ever since you started your novel, you haven’t had time to play with me.”

Ouch. Guilty as charged. I spent the next two hours coloring and decorating sheets of paper with stickers and scraps of leftover Christmas wrapping paper.

My writing has made my life more complicated than most non-writers can imagine. There’s the networking part of publishing (Facebook, Writer’s Digest Community).

• Writing blog posts.
• Writing brilliant and brief comments on other people’s blog posts (in hope that they decide to read mine).
• Investigating journals to submit to.
• Prepping my work for submission (which involves lots of screaming at my computer over formatting issues).
• Submitting work (writing cover letters, mailing or emailing my work).
• Keeping track of where and what I’ve submitted.
• Waiting for rejection and/or acceptance letters.
• Oh, and writing. Yeah, let’s not forget that last one.

So what suffers? My relationships. “You haven’t had time to play with me, Mommy.”

When I’m writing, I’m totally invested in the present. It’s easy be seduced by the 24/7 demands (or perceived demands) of this world. (Can you believe how compelling Facebook is? Just think, I can build my own zoo or farm! Keep up with hundreds of close, personal friends. Join thousands of groups.)

But if my relationships suffer, is it worth it? If I don’t have time to talk to my husband, play with my children, or love God, then it’s time to get off the grid.

“Off the grid” can mean living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities. (Google it; it’s a pretty interesting topic.) It can also mean this: wanting to live differently because my current life doesn’t line up with my future goals. The grid is all the stuff we overdesire, the stuff we are imprisoned by, the stuff we think everyone expects us to do. It traps us in a little box of manic over-busyness.

• If your goal for the future is to reduce your carbon imprint, what will you do? You might live without public utilities.
• If your goal is to publish a novel, you’ll discipline yourself to write, network, submit and learn from rejection.
• If your goal is to have meaningful relationships with others, you’ll spend time with them.

But if your desire is to love God fully, you’ll put aside the things of this world that crowd out your time for God. That doesn’t mean ditching good things. It’s when I distort them and believe that my writing is the only thing that matters and I must give every waking moment (and some sleeping ones) to pursue my dream that it becomes a problem.

I have a desire to be published. I believe God wants me to write and be published. But that’s not the end-all, be-all of my life. To quote agent Chip MacGregor,

“Publishing your book does not validate your life. Seeing your name in print doesn’t automatically mean you are a good person, or that your life has been worthwhile.”

Ouch. I’m guilty of thinking this. I’m sure some of you are guilty of trying to validate your life in other ways: work, sports, education, possessions and so on. And some of us care far too much about things that will pass away in the end.

“We have living affections for dying things.” —John Owen

So how do we get off this grid? Two ways Christ did this on the night he was betrayed (and here I’m borrowing from a sermon preached at my church by Bill Nash):

1. He paused to enjoy his relationship with his disciples. They ate and sang a song together. We can get off the grid by enjoying life—not the manic whirlwind of activity that we mistake for life, but the relationships with others and God that is true life.
2. He also prayed, submitting to the will of the Father. That will included suffering—a suffering that led to our forgiveness. We get off the grid when we submit to God’s will, cherish the finished work of Christ, and share with others how we have been forgiven.

These aren’t things that are easy for me, but I’m willing to get off the grid. Are you?

Inflation is only expected to continue due to excessive printing of money to compensate for the bursting economic bubbles, which were arguably created by printing too much money with artificially low interest rates in the first place.
The 2008 price shocks in oil followed by the financial collapse have led many people to begin taking measures to become more self-sufficient. Some have taken steps to conserve electricity, reduce spending and consumption, while others are planting kitchen gardens and installing solar panels on their homes. Even living off the grid is becoming a mainstream concept for those seeking independence.

Indeed, becoming more self-sufficient is proving to make common sense whether one anticipates more hardship to come or not.

Sure, many of us would love to live completely off the grid without giving up everyday comforts, but for most of us this is not practical. However, there are many steps that can be taken to move towards self-sufficiency which can be relatively painless and quite rewarding.

The following are 10 basic suggestions for more independent living.

1. Reduce your debt: Do you best to get your debt under control. Call your credit cards companies and ask for a similar work out plan that they received from the taxpayers. You can also do the same with mortgages.

2. Reduce your consumption: Evaluate your current budget and determine absolute necessity. Push your comfort level to find areas where you can scale back, and then identify comforts that you’re willing to sacrifice.

3. Reduce energy use: Change light bulbs, have entertainment systems plugged into a splitter that can be shut off completely to reduce phantom charges, etc. Carefully plan shopping trips and other transportation needs.

4. Store energy: Always have back-up propane storage and a large wood pile for a rainy day. Investing in a generator of some kind (even a solar generator) will be money well spent.

5. Invest in food storage: With a falling dollar and rising food prices, why not create a food savings account? Get some good books, dehydrators and vacuum sealers for storage methods. Best storable food items are grains (rice, beans, flour), canned goods, seeds, and some prepackaged items.

6. Produce your own food: Replace your lawn with a garden, fruit trees, and keep chickens. Go on hunting and gathering adventures for nuts, fish, and wild game. Store extra garden seeds!

7. Learn new skills: Surf the internet, read books, and take courses in practical skills like gardening, cooking with whole foods, composting, carpentry, alternative energy, natural health and wellness etc.

8. Start a side business: Turn your passion or hobby into a small side business to make some supplemental income. Who knows, it may become your path to full financial independence.

9. Install alternative energy: Start with small installations like a solar hot water system, a solar freezer, a solar attic fan, or a wood stove etc. If you have limited funds, tip-toe your way to independence.

10. Suggest solutions for your community: Engage your local community in discussions to take steps for self-sufficiency. Share your story and build support.

These steps will save us money as we move closer to the ultimate prize of independence. For me personally, each action my family takes to live more simply makes us more motivated to do better. So, the steps seem to become swifter after we took the first few awkward baby steps.

Initially I was very excited at the prospect of joining. There’s no twinnies in the group, of course, because mine are THE ONLY TWINS ON THE ISLAND. Not that it bothers me Actually, if I’m going full disclosure I do have to say that I have heard rumors about other twins on the island. Most people I meet who come over to coo at the girls tell me they know someone who knows someone who has twins. Initially I fell for this, but I now I believe I’ve been on the island long enough that I’m actually hearing rumors about myself.

Anyway, back to the mother’s group. I first learned of the group when I was flying with 5wk old Lulu to the fancy island to have her preemie eyes checked. Eyes were fine, and we met a nice lady on the plane with a baby about the same age but about 3 times the size. She was flying with her Mum and they all seemed nice and normal and told me about the Moms group. Apparently she was too nice and normal for this island, and she moved to Florida soon after, but before she left she put me on the group email list. I had every intention of joining the group when my girls were a bit older. At that point it was a never ending nursefest and they were itty bitty and the docs advised us to limit their contact with the outside world until their bodies, lungs, immune systems, etc had more of a chance to develop.

In the midst of their growing I read the weekly Mothers Group emails and decided this group was not my bag. I’m not a snob, or picky. It’s not like it was one little thing, it was a whole bunch of little weird things that individually (with one huge exception) I’m cool with, but combined formed a perfect storm of freakiness. Here are the reasons, in random order:

1) Yurts. There was a whole lot of meeting in yurts going on. I’m not saying I’m anti-yurt, though they do bring to mind dancing bears and reefer, and I was kind of over that by 22. Er, 25, no later. But the yurts alone weren’t a deal-breaker.

2) Off the Grid. The yurts were in the wily-wags, well off the grid. Not saying I’m anti off the grid. Hell, I tried it myself. Not a yurt, mind, but Jungledad and I lived in a solar house with catchment water in the middle of the jungle in a highly active lava zone for a month and a half. The solar power rarely worked and the place was over-run with lizards and our satellite was struck by lightning and the catchment tank exploded, sending a tidal wave of 10,000 gallons down the front lawn and us fleeing soon after, so not an experiment I would repeat, but again, not a deal-breaker in itself.

The problem is its murder to get to these places. It requires 4wd and an iron stomach to navigate those jungle craters/potholes. One turn and you can disappear into the jungle and be eaten by wild pigs, that is if you haven’t already been eaten by what I like to call the 3 dogs of the apocalypse : pit bulls, dobermans, and rottweilers, all of which feature prominently and without the hindrance of pesky leases or chains in rural areas around here.

3. Vaccinations Ding ding ding! This is a deal-breaker. Beware, I am laying down all kinds of smack here. I am anti non-vaccinating parents. I think parents that don’t vaccinate their kids are a menace to society. They are worse than the 3 dogs of the Apocalypse in my book because they kill a lot more babies. Literally tens of thousands of babies die in the world each year from catching completely preventable diseases from children and adults not vaccinated. In many places in the world, vaccinations are not readily available, so we are all damn lucky to live where they are easy to get. Anyway, so I know for a fact that there are Moms in this group that do not vaccinate, and I have babies, so I’m not cool with it. For more of my smack talking on vaccinations, see What Happens. I’ll stop the ranting now.

I have more reasons, but after the vaccinations thing they seem really petty so I won’t even list them. Anyway, all my avoidance has been for naught, because that group has now infiltrated the Moms Group I co-founded, Mommy Movie Night, were we meet up once a week or 2 weeks and have a beer and see a movie. This week, Mommy Movie Night was over-run.

I figured this was my chance. I could give those Moms a fair shake and they would be cool and hilarious and prove me wrong. One of said Moms sat next to me and I struck up a conversation, the usual stuff: boy or girl, how old, what part of the island do you live on, where did you move here from, etc. It was all going fine: young daughter, in town, Midwest. Then I made the fatal mistake of asking her what brought her to the island, thinking (hoping) she would say work. Stupid me. Instead she said,

“Are you familiar with Astro-Geography?”

Oh boy. As the wife of an Astrophysicist who is not amused when mistaken for an Astrologer, which he considers a pseudo-profession for charlatans and wackos, I knew what followed was going to be highly suspect.

Was. It. Ever.

I tuned a lot of what she said out because it was too damn crazy and I can never really follow when people start talking about “energies.” I think the gist was that she had consulted this….”professional,” if you will, to find out where on the planet she and her daughter should live. The answer apparently was the Midwest, and she and her child “felt okay” there, but unfortunately the energy of her partner didn’t jibe with the Midwest so they all went back to the Astrogeographer, who told them to move to this island.

Oh. Brother.

And I’ll just bet she doesn’t vaccinate… Can’t wait to find out who I’ll meet next Mommy Movie Night!