Wanted: More Time in Each Day!

Do you think if I posted that ad on craigslist that some kindly god would grant me more time to get stuff accomplished each day, or just laugh and make my insomnia even worse?

Sitting down in the morning to make a list of what to try to get done each day has become an exercise in prioritizing. But, how does one prioritize when everything is urgent? For instance, today a friend is coming over to clean out my giant compost corral - it contains probably close to a ton of composting chicken manure and hay plus bags of alder sawdust. To get ready for her arrival, instead of making the dinner I'd planned, I raked the weeds and rocks away so she can back right up to it . Microwave popcorn is an acceptable dinner substitute, right?

While talking to her about coming out, I mentioned my homemade liqueurs and said I'd send some home with her. When I got up this morning, I realized my house looks like a group of toddlers broke in and messed around all day. It would be several hours' work to get it cleaned up and she's due here in less than that amount of time. Solution? Clean the kitchen and the bathroom and don't worry about the rest.

But, our daytime temperatures are still reaching 100 so early morning is the best time to work on demolishing the deck, and considering how much work is left to do on that, it's a pretty high priority. However, so is emptying out the shed since it will be picked up in a few days to go live somewhere else. The tools we're using on the deck are still in there along with all the culled tools (boxes and boxes) that will go in the yard sale.

As I sit here typing, crowded in place by the two boxes of paintings to my left, a newly inflated exercise ball rolling around behind me, the box with Mata Ortiz pottery and a pile of empty boxes behind me, and the desk with a 2" stack of filing to be done, I wonder if maybe straightening up in here isn't a priority. No, no, no. I have to stay focused on getting the outside stuff done.

The exercise ball reminds me that I did not get any of my exercises or stretches for Physical Therapy done yesterday and I have another appointment today. The exercises, stretches, and balance exercises to ideally be done each day now add up to about an hour's worth of time. Some are supposed to be done more than once a day but I rarely accomplish that. I need to making healing a priority but how do I do that when we've got to meet deadlines.

Speaking of deadlines, I am not impressing the author who likes my editing. I have not met a single deadline since we started working together. It's not that I'm being a lazy bum, but rather that my life keeps imploding. I'm very grateful that he is so understanding about it but he does have the right to want his work to get published, too, and has readers chomping at the bit to buy his books. So, even though I've not worked on that for a while yet, I do feel like it should be a priority. I want to do a good job, though, and trying to work on it at 3 am when I can't sleep is probably not when my mind is the sharpest!

So, if anyone knows how to create more usable time in a day - many days, not just one - please clue me in. Quit blogging for a start, you say? Hm, I've considered it but then I wonder if the blog is one of my few remaining links to sanity. Not sure I want to take the risk of falling off the cliff. It often feels like I'm hovering fairly close to the edge as it is.

Which brings me to another Wanted ad I could post on craigslist: supportive friends. One definitely finds out who one's friends are when times are tough. I've been surprised to find which ones were fair weather friends and which ones are there to listen and give me a shoulder to cry on. Friendship is like marriage - it's for better or worse. If you're not there for your friends during the tough times, how can you expect them to be there for you when you encounter tough times in your own life? It's not surprising in some ways; our incredibly overscheduled busy 21st century lifestyle doesn't put much value into the simple things like human connections.

Of course, people also often choose to eliminate negativity from their lives and given my current state of being, that would be me. I'm finding it hard to be my normal cheery, facetious, and fun self while drowning in a big pit of shit. Power of the pig, my ass. The only thing he did was leave me a big mess.

My Adventures with Craigslist

Ruchi wrote about her adventure with buying a kitchen cart off craigslist. I've also been having craigslist adventures but from the other end: as the one with the goods. In Ruchi's case, she and her boyfriend had to figure out, after the fact, how to get a kitchen cart home when it didn't fit in their car. I guarantee that if someone here had bought that cart from me, they would have been knocking on my door the minute they knew it wouldn't fit, begging for me to somehow take responsibility and fix the situation. They might even want to renege on the sale, get their money back, and even ask for compensation for mileage for the drive. (Seriously.) No problem solvers here, it seems.

I've added a note to some of my postings for the people who aren't paying attention: "Note that I am way north of town and I will not deliver this item." I'm tired of talking to them and having them whine about the long drive. If you didn't want to make the drive, you should've just passed on the item in the first place. Depending on my time, I am sometimes willing to meet people in town when I go to the CSA. In fact, I try to time my postings to craigslist so that I can get everything set up to do that, without them having to wait more than a day or two to meet me. But, I don't always have time to do that, and some things don't fare well sitting in a hot vehicle for hours.

After having much of yesterday sucked up with back and forth email, too, I'm ready to add: "If you don't put your phone number in your email, your email will be deleted. I don't have time to email back and forth with you fifteen times to tell you the condition (which was well described in the post), the model number (usually included in the post), how far it is to my location (Hello? Google maps), and basically hold your hand through the entire process of you getting something at a fraction of the cost. You're an adult; act like one."

'Course I don't do that because, sigh, we need to get rid of this stuff and we can't be picky in a bad economy. Yard sales are a whole heck of a lot of work, but it might be easier in the long run because everyone would come at once instead of dealing with multiple people for every item. On the other hand, petty theft is on the rise, it seems, at yard sales so that adds a level of frustration to that route. I need to recruit a friend or two to help when we do have the yard sale.

One guy's email made me laugh this week. On a few items, we've put a price and OBO. I hate opening that door but the tough economic times are causing the used market to be flooded with sellers and relatively few buyers. My sweetie's theory is that many people simply do not have cash - any cash - to buy from craigslist, so they end up buying something new, for a lot higher price, because they can use credit to do that. So, when this guy responded to my OBO posting with $30 CASH, it made me laugh. Of course it's going to be cash. Does he really think I'm accepting offers on credit?

I would possibly, however, barter at this point for help cleaning up the yard. There are many weeds and brush piles to clean up, and our time always seems too stretched to get to that. My neighbor keeps telling me that it's okay to put the brush in the wash to help with erosion. I've searched the county's website, though, and can find no mention of this one way or another. I know construction debris is banned and they have made people remove dumped inert materials even if it helped slow bank erosion. I don't want to take the risk that they will get on our case for something else after spending a lot of time and effort lining the banks with cut brush. So it's got to be hauled off.

Even though every craigslist experience does not go smooth as silk, overall the process is far easier than the old days of having to place, in person, an ad in the newspaper. And we have met some nice folks occasionally. Best of all, we get to see our things that are dusty from lack of use heading off to a new home where they will be pampered and loved as a new toy again.

Another Kind of Downsizing

We are working hard to downsize our possessions here, focusing mostly right now on things stored in the shed (or on the disappearing deck). As I look through the house and see how much stuff we have managed to accumulate, my eyes fall on a stack of boxes tucked away in the closet.

Each box in this stack contains clothes for a particular weight range. Sizes overlap since manufacturers can use widely varying criteria in their labeling. The boxes are not large; they were originally designed as file storage boxes. Yet, there are quite a few of them reflecting my weight loss and gain over the past few years.

How did I manage to accumulate so many pounds again? That's no mystery! When I am stressed, I eat. And I do not make healthy choices nor do I only eat when I am physically hungry. My body gladly packs on the pounds, figuring the stress must signal a coming famine for which it must prepare or die.

Even if food prices go up significantly, I don't anticipate being unable to find any food at all. However, my body does not know that. It is well-prepared to be able to go quite some time with insufficient calories. It is not well-prepared, however, for increased physical demands on it, as it may need to meet if gas prices increase again.

It is time to downsize my body, and my hoarded clothing in multiple sizes. I pledge here and now to let go of all* of the clothes that do not yet fit when we leave this house. I hope it does not take so long for us to get out of here that I work my way down to the smallest clothes in that stack, but I hope to get into at least a couple of the boxes.

To accomplish this, I need to start planning meals again instead of eating in such a haphazard and craving-driven pattern. Planning meals will also help us work our way through some of the food in the pantry before moving and save us money on meals out. I may start posting again occasionally on my food blog about this journey.

*I have reneged on such pledges before and know myself well enough to leave a little wiggle room. I'll probably keep a few outfits from each size or things I really, really like. One needs something to look forward to on the journey!

Do you spend your time Living or Rearranging Stuff?

Today, we spent all of our time just rearranging our stuff. My sweetie drove down to the storage unit and rode a bike back. When he got home, we both got on our Xtracycle bikes and rode back to the storage place to put them in the new unit I just rented so we can empty out the shed. It was immediately obvious that the contents of the shed were not going to fit in the smaller unit, so we rearranged our plans and spent the next several hours sorting through everything in the old, and larger, storage unit.

We ended up taking a full load back to the house - things, mostly tools, that we are not going to keep. This opened up a lot of space in the storage unit but created a space issue at home. There's little space available in the house as I'm busy sorting through stuff inside and housekeeping has taken a back seat to everything else going on. We decided to put everything we're going to sell on one side of the shed ... that we also need to sell.

Tomorrow, we'll load up everything in the shed that we're going to keep and haul it over to the storage unit (where it lived for a few months when we first moved up here). We'll try to get rid of the bulky stuff we aren't keeping through craigslist but it would be too labor-intensive to do that for boxes and boxes of smaller tools. We hope to pull together an all-tool yard sale within the next few weeks.

Hopefully, however, the shed will sell before then ... which, of course, means we'll have to move all the tools into the house until the yard sale.

Confused? Tired just from reading that? So are we!

It dawned on us this afternoon, as we sat inside the air-conditioned house drinking ice cold water and trying to recover from the record heat here, that we spend an inordinate amount of our time just rearranging stuff rather than actual doing fun things and living.

This is the price of having "stuff" - you have to house it, maintain it, store it, clean it, insure it, repair it, rearrange it, and, once in a great while, you might even get to use it. We are looking forward to having less stuff so that we spend less time dealing with it and more time living.

How much of your time do you spend just taking care of your stuff?

Carts and Horses

Our horses keep falling behind the cart; not through any fault on our part but due to schedules set by others. As we continue to remove the deck - soon to become a destruction project rather than a dismantling one - I occasionally glance up to the roof line and grimace at the condition of the fascia where the deck roof was attached. There are bits of tar stuck there, holes from the bolts, and the wrong paint color.

The logical thing to do would have been to work on it once the roof was off but the deck was still in place, when a short ladder would easily reach it. However, the deadline for removal means we don't have the time to do that. So, we're looking at having to use a long extension ladder to clean this up later.

Likewise, it would make the most sense to begin the serious culling of possessions after we've made a decision on what we want to do and where we want to go next. If we rent a small house, we need to downsize 25-40%. If we go to the extreme of attempting life in a 5th wheel trailer, then we need to downsize more like 75%. We have not made this decision yet, partly because our brains and emotions have been so occupied with other things.

When we began moving up here, we rented a storage unit in the area to help get the process started. It was great because as boxes were packed, we could get them out of our way each trip up to see how things were progressing with the house purchase. Once we were moving in, we emptied all of the household things out of storage and used it for yard and garage stuff that we didn't want to put inside the house. When we bought a shed, we were able to start moving those items over to the property.

It's been a slow process because the shed isn't big enough for everything we have and we were slowly going through items in storage to decide whether to keep them. Among the zoning issues that came up was the notification that the shed could not remain where we had it placed. After making the decision not to stay here, we hoped we'd have a little time to slowly empty it out. The plan - the logical approach - would be to go through the things left in storage and pull out everything we weren't going to keep, have a big yard sale, and then move the shed contents we wanted to keep back into storage. Then we'd try to sell the shed and recoup at least part of what we spent on it.

It's not going to work out that way. The cart has been pushed ahead of the horses once again and we need to dispose of the shed now. We don't have time to sort through the storage unit, especially since my sweetie's mom is back in the hospital with a serious bout of pneumonia; with her lousy lungs, this is worrisome. I've rented another storage unit so that we can simply empty out the shed and get it listed for sale by the end of the weekend. Hopefully it will get snatched up quickly and moving it can be arranged soon.

After that, the next logical step would be for us to go through the old storage unit, hold that yard sale, and consolidate back down to one unit. I'm figuring that things won't work out that way since nothing else has gone according to plan. In the meantime, too, we still need to make sure my mother-in-law recovers and gets the additional help she needs at home, finish removing the deck, clean up some yard mess created over the past week, and get rid of all the deck debris. We've had mixed success with giving away salvaged material and may, sadly, end up having to haul materials to the landfill. I'm still looking into all options possible, but the horses are about to push the cart off a cliff and bolt so I don't have a whole lot of time.

And, of course, all of this is just skirting around the big Clydesdale stomping all over the little tiny one man-cart. All of this energy, time, and money is being spent on destruction of a perfectly usable deck, getting rid of things we like and will probably need again later, and fulfilling other requirements instead of preparing a property and our lives for further economic collapse, climate change, and peak oil. We can't even begin to focus on that now so we just pretend the Clydesdale is a cute little miniature horse.

We do want to live more in the present since all of the losses we've suffered in the last six months have driven home the message that life cannot be lived in preparation for the future only. However, we're on other people's schedules, still having to focus more on the future than the present - getting projects done by their deadline and then hoping we have the energy left to do something we want to do.

In the meantime, anybody want some wood? How about some wood-working tools? And a big shed to put them in. Don't you need more jars and bottles for preserving food? Blankets to keep warm? Some clothes? They don't fit me now and probably never will again. How about a nice house, on a beautiful little acre with lots of wildlife, to put all these things in? And some pretty artwork for the shelves and walls, along with some books to read? Anybody? Please?

Eating my Way through the CSA

I love going to the CSA each week and doing my part as a volunteer to keep it running smoothly. The only catch is that being around all that wonderful looking fresh produce for hours each week, right around dinner time, can be torture, especially if I had a lot of errands to do in town beforehand and didn't have a good lunch.




You see, what happens is that I look over what we are getting for the week and start imagining menus. Not only are there the vegetables from our share, sometimes there are a few leftovers from the previous day's CSA pick-up. The share is usually pretty much the same between the two days, but occasionally there are a couple of items that differ. This week, the other pick-up got arugula but we didn't.

On occasion, I'm hungry enough that I take a little bit of time to toss together a snack for myself and the other volunteers using some of the surplus produce and a little bit of my own share. Since there are cooking demos at the CSA on a regular basis, salt and pepper are always on hand for seasoning. This season, we've added a new component as well, through a separate local vendor: bread shares.

I decided to make open-faced sandwiches this week, starting with slices of my sourdough bread share. Next, I skinned and seeded a bag of surplus roasted green chiles. There was a bag of leftover arugula, so I used the salad spinner I donated to the CSA to clean the leaves. Finally, I cored a spare Asian pear and cut it in thin slices. To assemble the sandwiches, I laid a roasted chile on each slice of bread, and then added the pear. A light shake of salt and pepper over it added seasoning and a leaf of arugula added bite. All the volunteers agreed they were delicious, although I thought they could have used just a splash of balsamic vinegar on top.

With my appetite briefly sated, I did my work, which includes stocking the surplus baskets. We offer surplus items from the previous pick-up's leftovers - that is, what has not been donated to one of a number of non-profit agencies the CSA helps out, as well as surplus from members' gardens, and the occasional slightly bruised vegetable from the current pick-up that we don't want to leave out for someone to take home as part of their paid share. At one point during the pick-up, I walked by the surplus area to see carrots, a couple of red potatoes and onions, and a bell pepper in the baskets.

Yum. Stew ingredients! went through my mind. In fact, this thought even spurred me to trade my cucumber for a basket of okra. I'm planning to make a tasty stew for dinner tonight and use my remaining bread to make croutons. For members that aren't vegetarian, the CSA also sells locally grown, organic meats which would also work well with the stew theme. I have a few limes in the fridge, so an arugula-Asian pear salad with lime vinaigrette might be a nice accompaniment to the stew. Too bad I'm out of local pecans.

Oops! It's 9:30 in the morning and I'm drooling all over my keyboard from writing this post...

Do Blonds Have More Fun?

I don't know about blond humans, but I do know the blond tarantulas I disturbed yesterday were not too happy. Trying to hide from me as I did my digging was probably not their idea of fun. I expect they'd rather spend their time eating or mating.

Exhaustion, Inattention, & Frustration

Both my sweetie and I are so worn out, frustrated, and exhausted that we are being less attentive to details than we normally would be.

My mother-in-law was discharged from the hospital this week and my sweetie took her home. He said it was lovely when they pulled in as all the neighbors immediately rushed over to see how she was doing. They helped carry in the home health equipment we'd picked up for her and brought over food to start making dinner. One of the neighbors had cleaned her house while she was gone and picked up all the (slippery) throw rugs from the floors. Another had cleaned up her yard.

My sweetie spent that evening and the next day and a half setting her house up for her recovery. One of the needed changes was non-slip strips on her concrete front stairs and landing. He told me he peeled the paper from the adhesive backing from each one, laid it down on each step, and then smoothed them out....by hand. He didn't even feel the sandpaper texture rubbing off his skin until he was done and looked down to see his palms were bleeding. This is definitely not the sort of mistake he would normally make but did not surprise either of us under the circumstances of late.

Since he got home yesterday, we have been hard at work prepping for another project the bureaucrats are making us have done. A lot of hard physical work needed to be completed this weekend to be ready for a crew tomorrow morning. I finished up what I had to do and turned my focus back to the deck dismantling project, which is also on a tight deadline.

Yesterday, I spent at least an hour with the cordless drill removing what seemed like a million screws from the plywood on the deck. This morning, I planned to start removing the top layer. I knew I'd need a pry bar since a couple of screws were stripped but I soon discovered I'd missed a couple of screws altogether. Of course, I'd left the screwdriver in the house. Because we had to put temporary fencing (chicken wire) across part of the deck so certain trouble-making dogs (ahem, Angel) wouldn't go flying off the edge with a four foot drop-off, I couldn't just walk over to the front door and get the screwdriver. I had to climb back down the ladder and go around.

The extension ladder, however, has a tendency to slip on the slight gravel slope at the base of the deck. My sweetie was busy and I didn't want to interrupt him. I didn't feel like using the smaller ladder I'd set up in the middle of the supports under the decking we'd already removed because that means I have to scoot on my butt underneath the supports to get out. So, I risked going down the ladder without my sweetie there to hold it.

The second I put my weight on it, I knew that was a mistake. It started sliding and I had no choice but to take the ride down with it.

I was very lucky. The fall could have been a lot worse than it was, with a cracked head, broken bones, or twisted knees or ankles. As it was, I did twist my back some and it's pretty sore. One ankle hurts a little but is definitely not twisted. My left forearm got scraped up and my right elbow took a hard hit with some tweaking to that wrist as well. I've cracked the right elbow before (and broken that wrist in a separate incident) and I don't believe I did that level of damage this time.

Unfortunately, the pain I do have means I won't be able to do any work on the deck removal for several days and my sweetie's "vacation" is over tomorrow. There is no way we will meet our deadline, so I've got to hope the bureaucrats will be understanding and extend it. My biggest challenge is going to be remaining civil to them when I make the call. We are expending a great deal of our own personal time and energy, not to mention money, dealing with all this stuff rather than spending our time, energy, and resources on more useful things like setting up rainwater harvesting or gardens!

When will life get back to normal again? When will we have the time to just wake up and go for a hike instead of working to meet someone else's deadline? When will I be able to enjoy seeing the birds in my yard instead of feeling bitter about how this has all turned out? Katie tells me "life is too short" and I agree, but we still have to do all this stupid stuff to satisfy someone else's demands.

But the half full glass IS half empty

Maybe it's just the pessimist in me, but I love the stuff at Despair, Inc. Check out their posters - I can't decide whether the Ambition one or the Challenges one more aptly sums up my current state of mind.

I read a fellow blogger's post today on how to be happy and one of her suggestions was basically to "quit yer whining" and look at the good things in your life. It's really hard to do this when you're so beaten down that you barely have the energy - mental, physical and emotional - to make it through the day, but I'll give it a shot.

~~~~~

It was lovely to see a Vermilion Flycatcher in the yard today. I look forward to seeing these beautiful birds every summer over the years here. Oh, wait. We're not staying here. Scratch that.

There are tons of butterflies flitting around the weeds. Good thing we don't have time to weed-eat and cut everything down with all the other work to be done.

The rainy season has finally ended so the weeds will finally quit growing like ... well, weeds. However, no water rushing down the wash periodically means I'll have to climb down there and pick up all the trash people throw in there and yell at idiots that can't read the "No Trespassing" sign.

Angel has so much vim and vigor she doesn't care that we've taken the six front steps off the porch. She just sails right off the edge despite the four foot drop. This is all well and good unless she tears her little doggie ACL or whatever it's called in poopers. Been there, done that with a dog and the recovery is tough on them.

Polie has the sense to use the remaining side steps. However, all he wants to do in the yard is try to catch the bees that like the same weeds as the butterflies. And eating bees makes him throw up.

My mother-in-law is recovering from her emergency hip replacement and doing well with her physical and occupational therapy. Unfortunately, she has no money and Medicare doesn't cover home health equipment so we had to buy everything she needs for her house. Luckily, she's ready to give us back my sweetie's Mata Ortiz pot, which we hope to sell to cover some of the costs.

I have lots of readers/friends online that are being wonderfully supportive through my turbulent time. But I can't seem to convince ya'll to move to the dry, hot desert to be my neighbors. 'Course with me planning to move again, I can see why you might not want to come here, but still...

~~~~~

See? I'm trying to look for the good but the bad is right there rearing up its ugly head. Someone needs to top off my glass so it's not half empty...

Trying to Minimize Government Waste

When the man came by last night to pick up the roof sheathing we'd listed on craigslist for free, he asked us why we were tearing the roof off our front deck. "It's really nice," he said. "I'd love to have a deck like that!"

We agreed with him and then assured him that we were not tearing it down by choice. This deck, which provides (provided) great shade on one long side of the house and a lovely place to sit and watch the birds, butterflies, bunnies, and burrowing ground squirrels, has been here for over four years. Visible to all who drive by and visible on the biannual overhead photos taken by the county government. As best we can tell, these photos are used, among other things, for making sure the assessor's office has every single taxable item on a property in their records and for enforcement of zoning codes.

But, I'm getting ahead of the story. When I first saw the photo of this house on the MLS listing, one of the things I really liked was the front deck with sunburst wrought iron railing. It was obviously not a new deck; in fact, we thought it may have been put up when the house was put in place.

We were wrong. A few months ago, we received a code violation notice from the county for a deck built without a permit. As per the instructions in our letter, I called the enforcement officer. Since we own the property, the county is holding us reponsible for the lack of permit even though it was a prior owner that actually did the deed. The assessor's records show it was built in '06 but apparently the zoning people didn't get around to noticing it on the ground for four years. I was informed that applying for a permit and paying for it even though it was already built would likely clear the violation.

If only life were so simple. Following their instructions, which were incomplete, we prepared our site plan and specs of how the deck had been built. We were a bit concerned after looking at their sample drawings for a covered porch that we were going to run into trouble with the deck's roof. It was connected to the edge of the house's roof, which was specifically not permitted according to the sample. Still, we proceeded with preparing the papers, prepared to cross that bridge when we got to it.

When I went to the county offices to file for the permit, I was told everything had to go through the flood control department for approval first since we live in a floodplain. They do not charge for their permits but have, as we were to find out, much stricter code requirements. After two weeks of waiting, we got a large packet back from that department. Among other things, they were unhappy with our site plan as it did not contain information they required, elements not included on the list given us by the other department. Although they didn't seem to have an issue with the deck, there was some additional distressing news in their packet that led us to hire a general contractor with over two decades of experience to help us through the permit process.

She spent hours meeting with me and with county officials. While officially our permit application for the deck had to be approved by the floodplain folks before it could go to the regular zoning department, the code violation issue was under a deadline and there was no way we could meet it as well as provide the voluminous information now required by the flood control department on their separate time table. She talked with the code enforcement officer who indicated simply removing the roof from the deck might solve our problems with the original code violation.

However, by this time, we'd done a little more investigation of our own and gotten feedback from the contractor, too. Even with the roof gone, there was no way the rest of the deck would meet code. While sturdy enough to last for decades, it was not built to code. Unfortunately, it is not a simple matter of just shoring up a few bits here and there. The supporting posts are not spaced correctly nor seated in properly-sized cement and rebar-reinforced holes, among other problems.

The entire deck was going to have to go. At this point, I called the code enforcement person and asked for the deadline we had to remove it entirely to make the code violation go away. Due to the amount of labor involved, my sweetie is taking time off work to meet the deadline. Hopefully he will still be able to since we had not factored in his mother's injury and hip replacement surgery! She's been moved closer to us for her physical therapy but checking in with her daily has put a crimp in the schedule and added a great deal of emotional strain to an already stressful situation.

We could, if we did things the typical American way, get this deck outta here in just a couple of days. Using a circular saw and a roll-off container destined for the landfill, we could rip and toss it quickly. That is not appropriate, though. Removing a perfectly good deck is already an incredible waste of the original effort and materials to construct it. No way are we going to add to the waste by trashing perfectly good materials.

Hence, the gentleman last night picking up the re-usable roof sheathing that has been removed. Friends with a truck also came by yesterday to help us haul the rolled roofing debris to the landfill. That will, we hope, be the only load that goes to the dump. Everything else should be recyclable or re-usable. The problem is that removing the millions of screws and nails is far more time-consuming and labor-intensive than just cutting everything up to throw away. And getting rid of it all is also time-consuming with little payback other than knowing we are not contributing to waste.

Craigslist is great for hooking up people with supplies but it sucks up a lot of time in the posting, responses, and then hoping people will actually show up when they say. (They rarely do.) The roof sheathing and weathered plywood decking is not in good enough shape to sell. The wood beams, posts, and supports will hopefully net a few dollars along with all the brackets and the wrought iron railing. It will in no way, though, be equivalent to the loss in value to the house from removing a nice deck.

And this is what really makes no sense. Because government departments don't work with each other, the county is going to lose tax revenues because the value of the house will be reduced. We do not have the funds to rebuild the porch to code nor the desire to go through the permit process again.

We are far from done with the permit nightmare. There is another looming issue we must deal with, one that will not devalue the house the way the loss of the porch does, but one that will cost us several thousand dollars out of pocket. Until it is completely resolved, I will not be writing about it.

I know there are those of you with good hearts and minds who will think we surely have not considered every option here, but let me assure you that we have. We've done a lot of research since this started and have hired two professionals to help us. The first person felt so badly about the whole unfair situation we've been placed in that she did not even charge us for her services. This will not be the case with the engineer we are currently working with. Both professionals have spoken extensively with county personnel to see if there is any way to avoid doing all the work they are demanding. There is not. The county will not waive any requirements, they will not grandfather them in, nor do they care that we are new owners and did not do the original work. Legal options are not possible for a variety of reasons I don't want to get into here, and in any case, would not result in us recouping our losses. The best we can hope for at this point is to get all the work done that is required of us and sell the house for enough that we don't totally lose our shirts.

This whole experience (of which you only have gotten a small glimpse) has been a huge drain on our time, our energy, our emotions, and our money. It has robbed us of our dreams and greatly increased our cynicism of what is happening in this country. Combined with the family traumas of the past few months (dog's cancer, nephew's death, and MIL's injury), I have been so depressed and angry that my whining and negativity is driving away friends and acquaintances.

I almost wrote a post this week on how to respond to someone in crisis like this. Do not tell them it will be okay - it might not, do not tell them they just need to meditate - they may not have the energy left to do even that, and do not just ignore them - they are already dealing with a heartless situation. Do not offer advice unless the person asks for suggestions or ideas.

No, in my opinion, the proper response is more along the lines of, "I'm so sorry to hear how difficult it has been for you lately. Is there anything I can do to help?" Then maybe offer to take the person out for a coffee or lunch, or help with the work of getting the property ready to put on the market, or just offer a hug and understanding. This may not be the case for everybody in crisis, but I know it is for me. I'd much rather have someone come take care of some of the weed-eating or pruning than tell me how I just need to hire a lawyer and sue everybody.

Please note that this obviously applies to dealing with people in person, not over the Internet. I do not expect folks across the country or the world to hop on a plane to come weed-eat my yard!

And This Bed was Just Right...

Call me weird, but I sleep on an air mattress rather than a "real bed." I've found it's more comfortable and it's a heck of a lot cheaper. With all of our moves, it's also far easier to move than box springs and a mattress.

Over the past month, there have been signs that Angel (dog) has been getting on the bed when we are gone. Signs like my sweetie's pillow tossed onto the floor and dog fur on the bed. The bed is currently on the floor as we haven't had the time to set up our wood platform for it. Evidently Angel was not happy with the amount of air in the bed this week.

I came home from an errand and when I entered the house, I immediately heard a high-pitched whine. Hm, not generally a good sound to hear. The noise led me to the bedroom where the built-in air pump for the mattress was running. Angel must have stepped on the control and turned on the pump for a firmer bed. It had been running for a while judging from the extremely full air mattress straining at the seams and from how hot the air pump had gotten.

I let out some air and the bed was still rock hard. Quite a lot of air had to be released before the bed was just right for us. It puzzles me that Angel would want it so firm since she is a sucker for blankets and pillows tossed on the floor, and loves her cushy custom made bench cover.

We now leave the air pump unplugged. And cover the bed with an old blanket.

Rotten dog....

Downsizing Progress

In an effort to reduce the amount of stuff we'll have to move and to open up the possibilities for living in a smaller place, I'm going through our belongings (again). Before making the final decision to toss in the towel here, we'd already decided to let go of two lovely lamps from our past. They were big and bulky, required large rooms to look good, and were a pain to pack and move. I'm happy to report they have moved on to new digs.

I'm working hard to pare down my overstuffed kitchen. Several appliances are gone already and there's a small box of additional items in the corner waiting for new homes. I suspect we'll end up having an enormous moving sale in a few months and kitchen items are often a good draw.

Yesterday, two folks took advantage of bulky outside items listed on craigslist. It was helpful to have them gone but they didn't really count towards reducing what we have to move since I scavenged them off craigslist only weeks ago myself. My yard was simply a way station for them. There was a positive side benefit, however, to this situation. One of the people who came by is interested in many of the same prepping-type activities that we are: gardening, forming community with neighbors, water harvesting, composting, chickens, canning, and so on. She didn't know anyone else with all of these same interests and we were each happy to find someone of like mind.

Today, after visiting with my mother-in-law in the hospital for a while, I went by the used bookstore and traded a dozen books and a dozen DVDs for store credit. My powers of resistance must have been working overtime as I only came home with one "new" book (another Vonnegut for hubby) and a DVD (The Dark Crystal) this visit.

We've been talking about going through the shed soon, too. Most of the appliance parts that I salvaged from the dishwasher and refrigerators are probably going to be freebies on craigslist; whatever doesn't go can be recycled. Salvaged plant pots are easily replaceable from any landscaping job so we'll let those go. Some lucky gardener is going to get lots of clean, tape-free cardboard for sheet mulching, and I'm still debating about the disposition of the compost. It's heavy to move, and if we don't move into a situation where gardening is an immediate option, it probably isn't worth the effort to move it and store it.

This is a problem I've run into before. We have left compost behind a number of times, usually giving it to neighbors who are thrilled to have had someone else do all the work of making good soil for them. This time, I'm probably going to also get rid of the round composting bin. Perhaps my friend in town would like it as she keeps putting off starting her own compost pile. She's also going to be the beneficiary of my newest solar oven. She's been wanting one for a long time and I really don't need three!

It's too bad most of you readers don't live in this area because you could clean up on prepping supplies. I'll be thinning out my supply of canning jars and lids, cheesecloth (got a whole case available!), and possibly even some food. We haven't decided yet on our water tanks, but tools are likely to be pared down to the bare essentials. There's gonna be one helluva sale here.

MIL Update

My mother-in-law made it through hip replacement surgery today and seems like she will be okay. As soon as she's able to get out of bed and move around on her own, they'll release her. We'll take her home and get her all set up with plenty of easy food (probably frozen meals as well as dehydrated soup mixes from my stash). She has outstanding, caring neighbors that will help out and have told us they will be happy to ferry her back and forth to physical therapy as needed.

We need to come up with 'thank you' baskets for the neighbors. So far, I'm thinking fresh bakery bread, my prickly pear jelly, and fresh hot peppers from the garden (since they like to cook spicy Mexican food). Definitely need to round them out with something additional. Oh, maybe my 5-pepper jelly. Perhaps some dried beans from my CSA. Anyone have other suggestions? They have to travel so fresh flowers won't be practical.

Needed: 1 Teflon Umbrella

It's raining shit. Sorry for the language, dear readers, but, as you know, I do tend to call a spade a spade. I mean really, consider the difference between these two phrases:

It's raining shit.

It's raining big ol' cow patties.


See? The second one just does not have the same emotional punch as the first one. And since I feel like an emotional punching bag, I'm going to continue to say it's raining shit.

What is the crisis dujour, you ask? What are you whining about now? (Honestly, dear readers, I'm wondering why you keep reading my blog when all I do anymore is whine.)

The latest piece of shit to be slung into our faces by the universe, which I'm beginning to think of as a big feces-flinging monkey, is my mother-in-law's health. After taking care of her mother for years, her own health entered what has seemed to be a rather steep decline, a condition not at all uncommon for a primary care giver. She's been going to multiple specialists lately to diagnose and treat a number of problems, all of which have now been eclipsed by an acute injury.

We were all relieved last week when she apparently survived a bad fall in the house with only deep bruises. Yet, the pain persisted and last night we got a call that she could not move, could not get out of her chair. Luckily, she has neighbors that are extremely helpful and have been keeping an eye on her since she moved into their little cluster of small rental homes. They called us and then 911. We stayed up for hours, waiting to hear the prognosis. Finally, in the middle of the night, we heard they were transporting her to a hospital in Tucson after a CATscan revealed a broken hip. She is headed into surgery this afternoon.

We have no idea of the severity at this point or what surgical procedure they will be doing. What we do know is that hip fractures in the elderly are often bad news, and given her other health issues, this could be a turning point.

There's no way to know how this will play out; we'll just have to find out as it unfolds. It does mean, however, that we will not even consider the possibility of leaving the area for the time being. With regards to selling this place, who knows. We still have to deal with the bureaucrats but may not have the energy left over to do any of the minor fix-ups necessary to get it ready for market, much less the emotional toll of moving again.

Strike That

Due to the latest developments, you may disregard one of the dilemmas posed in the previous post. It will not be possible to remain on this property and do what we moved here to do. While things might change a few years' hence, they also might not and then we'd be in an even worse predicament. We are going to have to cut our losses and get out, after dealing with the bureaucratic red tape.

So, the remaining dilemma is whether to stay in the area with the secure job and source of produce (through CSA), with the possibility of again dealing with similar bureaucratic hassles if we buy a place, or follow some other path with no financial security or guarantees of a better situation.

Tossed in the Garbage

With the way I'm feeling these days, it was far more distressing yesterday than it normally would have been to discover my name tag for the first day of the new CSA session was tossed in the garbage ... before I was even aware name tags had been made. I'd walked by the little trashcan and noticed my name resting in there but had not investigated to see what sort of paper it was on. Later, another volunteer asked for a name tag since she'd seen some on other volunteers. I asked the appropriate person where to find labels to make one for her and was told they were already all made and in a drawer. Well, no. Mine was made and in the trash. She didn't have one at all.

Why is the universe treating me like garbage?!


I was whining with another volunteer yesterday - and yes, I realize I am whining a lot and I hate that I keep having so much crap going on that is making me so miserable and whiny - and she told me about some tough times she faced years ago. In the midst of a series of horrible events, people kept telling her, "It's going to get better from here. Nothing else bad can happen to you." They were wrong, of course, and several more horrible things happened. In retrospect, however, she told me this was a turning point for her life. Rather than her life's path gently changing direction as she went along, it smacked her right up against a brick wall and bounced her off in a completely new direction. For her, it has turned out to be a very good direction.

Our focus for the last two years has been on the future and what we need to do to prepare for it. Living in the present, doing the things we enjoy, these have been sacrificed. We are trying to regain that aspect of our lives but finding it very challenging. What we'd like to be doing and where we'd like to live are not always compatible with being prepared for the future, the current economy, and our financial situation. I'd love to just "follow our dreams and trust the Universe" but considering how poorly things have been working out for us, that sounds like a suicide mission.

There are possibilities that we can work things out here with the bureaucrats. Well, actually, that we can bend over and get screwed (without lube), and then seriously modify our plans for the property in the future.

There are advantages to staying here: we already have the place, we've got a share in a well, we've got good soil (although it needs more compost added to retain moisture), my sweetie has a decent job, I work for our CSA share instead of paying cash, and we know the region - and by this I mean both what resources are available here and the southwestern desert climate.

The disadvantages to staying here are having to always do work-arounds to use our own property, giving up the ability to do some things we want (fun stuff) and things we need to do (long-term survival stuff) on the property, it's only going to get hotter and dryer here in the desert, and my sweetie's job is just that - a job. Nothing inspiring or particularly special for him; just a secure paycheck.

We have talked and talked and talked about our options and still can't make a decision. One hour we're sure we'll stay and the next we're sure we won't, but without a good idea what other realistic options would be. Neither of us have rich relatives that are going to die soon and leave us a bundle of cash and we don't play the lottery, so whatever choice we make will be financed by our own hard work. And in this economy, there are a whole lotta people out there desperate and scrambling for any crumbs left from the pie. The pie seems to be getting smaller all the time and the fruit in it is not quite at the peak of freshness any more.

I don't want sympathy (although empathy is nice). If you have any suggestions on how to move forward, please toss them out there. And by there, I don't mean in the garbage.