This post should be locked into the top of my journal. Thanks, author_by_night!

( Ahavah's Emergency Contacts )

EDIT: N/M I got one!! Thanks to Nalyua & LBD!!!

I tried breeding my one valentine and got no egg. If anyone can get an extra valentine, I would really love to trade for it. I have many awesome things on my scroll now.

I do a lot of purebred lines, whitexgold Dorkfaces and other nifty two-toned lines, lots of lineages & themes (Ridiculous, Mudita, Haggis the Fearsome, Firefly, Grateful Dead, Angels, Demons, etc.)

Thank you!



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I just wanted to ask all of my friends to wrap dodging_fate's son, Jonah, in prayer & healing light. Little Jonah has spent too much of his short life in ICU. Let's see him strong and healthy...and safely home with his family!

Thank you in advance! Please feel free to add Jonah to your prayer lists. ♥

I've been working through The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity for the past couple of weeks. When I went to NC, my dear friend lahermite was telling me about all the awesome progress she was making with it, and I happen to have that book (started it but never stuck with it), so I decided to give it another try. It's very helpful having a partner, and I find that the book is helping me quite a bit.

It's somewhat modeled after the 12 Step program, and in that regard is somewhat similar to the 4T Prosperity Program that I've participated in several times and found very useful. I don't necessarily think that I'm blocked as an artist, but I'm definitely in need of spiritual and creative healing. She incorporates God, but isn't preachy (and really, these are metaphysical concepts). I really like how she explains that God is “Good Orderly Direction”.

The two most important parts of the Artist's Way program are the morning pages and the artist's date. Morning pages are just three long-hand pages of “brain dump”. The first time I attempted AW, I didn't write it out long-hand. Maybe that's why I never kept with it. I have this time, and sometimes I give up before three pages, but I am finding them beneficial. The first week, I explored why journal keeping long-hand was such an issue for me. Ha! The artist's date is just a two hour block that you take for yourself, to nurture your inner artist. I enjoy those quite a bit.

There are other tasks that you do every week. She lists several, though you don't have to do all of them. There's affirmation work, which I've used a lot of. She also suggests that you find your “blurts” - negative self-talk – and rework them positively. She calls the culprit the inner “Censor”, though something about that word turns me off. I at first thought, 'Oh, I'm a very optimistic person already. I do affirmations all the time.” Then I realized that I do indeed have a running stream of negative self-talk. I can catch it and reaffirm it when I'm consciously working on my goals, but it's quietly there in the background almost all of the time, getting away with talking down to me. For me, I find that my blurts tend to center on the theme/belief that I am a failure, both to myself and my extended family. By that, I mean the family I grew up with. My husband and children, I do right by them and they always support me. It's the not-meeting-expectations thing, and echoes of conversations where that was solidified by very important people in my life.

I realize that this feeling of failure I carry may be contributing to all of the crazy “outside” circumstances that always hit us whenever we start getting ahead. I've done a lot of releasing work as far as my hurts and past abuse, but that underlying belief about myself is still there. Luckily, I'm working on it.

I've also been sticking with my Flylady routine. My house, while still half-full of unpacked boxes, is staying pretty nice and tidy. I've kept with my basic routines for a few weeks now. My bed gets made in the morning, I dress to the shoes, do morning pages, reboot laundry & dishes, do a little zone work. I figured, if I was fighting to reclaim motivation in my life, I'd fake it til it happened. Luckily, it starts happening through the act of faking. It's hard not to feel good about myself when I can report back positively to my partner, and my husband calls our home lovely, and my sink shines at me at least once or twice a day. I even have our menu planned for the week, and I'm tackling our spending.

Part of it is that farm life agrees with me. Being able to walk around my land, play with my critters, and bask in the love of my family has done some serious good in my healing. Now I'm ready to actually take control of my life in a conscious manner again, and I'm able to do that with some degree of success.

One task is to list five imaginary lives – if we had five other lives to live, what would we do? A lot of my choices have a similar, spiritual theme. We're supposed to make a list of 20 things we enjoy doing, and the last time we did them. I realized how totally I'd dropped my spiritual practices. No wonder I lived in a state of constant apathy! I decided this week's focus would be on reclaiming my spiritual being. I was supposed to start taking solitary walks again, and to do shamanic journeys. The weather has been awful all week, so I never got to my walks, but I did try journeying last night. I almost put it off since I can't find my drumming cd, but I realized it for the excuse that it was. I didn't get as “deep”, but I got the guidance I needed. And as far as making the decision to improve it, and opening back up to the spiritual reservoir, I've crossed off several other “love but been too long” items from my list. I've been keeping up with my reiki self-healing, I've done several distance healing sessions for others, I spent some sacred space time in prayer, and I'll be holding a ceremony for a few people tonight.

My “life pie” is way off balance. To make a life pie, you draw a circle and divide it into six segments. Then you label each one Spirituality, Exercise, Play, Work, Friends, Family, and you put a little dot in the area as to the level you feel satisfied. The inner ring is “not satisfied at all” and the outer ring is “very satisfied”. Mine is totally screwy. Family is the only area I'm extremely satisfied in. Work got better than I expected, since I've been keeping on track with these two programs. I feel good about that. Play is better than it should be, with everything else lacking. I'm trying to even that out. I'm slowly gaining my spiritual self back. I've taken to repeating my Life Motto daily, which I haven't done in over a year. Maybe two. I need to start exercising again, which is why I'm eager to get back to my walks. I've totally ballooned. And I have no friends. None here where I live now, anyway. No one I can just hang with if I wanted to go out without the family. I've enjoyed being hermitish, but I do realize I need friends.

Tomorrow starts week 3. I will try to keep track of my progress here on my blog. If anyone would like to join in, don't hesitate! lahermite is three weeks ahead of me, and it's working out fine anyway.

Now that I've finished this blog post (another thing I enjoy doing but have been neglecting), I'm going to spend the rest of my artist's date working on my NaNo WonderSaga. I've been going through what I wrote in November and working out a timeline. I'm also working on family trees and plotting ideas. After I get caught up on everything I came up with in November, I'll be back to writing again. I think I'll make some salsa too. That's a creative endeavor, and one I have also been putting off. I'm holding a healing ceremony tonight for a couple of friends, too. I look forward to that.

I've been neglecting this blog. I'm going to try to work on that. I've been sharing most of our pictures and updates on facebook, so a lot of you have probably seen these already. I'm long overdue for a picture post about our new place though, so I thought I would share.

First and most importantly – we have two new additions to our family! Well, technically we have three, if you count the stray and skittish cat that lurks around. Eden's named her Princess. I haven't been able to get a picture of her, as she has a tendency to run from all of us and only sneaks to the food bowls when she thinks we're not looking.

We got Bo, a rhodesian ridgeback, with the house. The german shepherd we were supposed to get was hit by a car, so the owners left us Bo instead. Apparently they couldn't take big dogs to the place they were moving. Bo is an energetic, kind of dumb dog. He reminds me a lot of our old dog Brutus, only slightly smarter. Slightly. Bo sometimes doesn't know how to handle himself around the lady-dogs. He got overzealous with Achaiah on an icy day and ended up knocking her down. Poor Achaiah twisted her ankle pretty badly and was laid up in the house for days, needing Josh to actually carry her outside to use the potty. We're trying to decide whether Bo should be neutered. Now, I purposefully chose not to fix Achaiah, but I generally feel most animals should be fixed. I'd hate to see how crazy Bo might go if the ladies go into heat. He's a good coyote dog though, and Josh is afraid that fixing him might take away that aspect of his personality. I think he's coming around to the idea since Bo hurt Achaiah.



This is Bo. We've taken to often calling him Bocephus.

Our next newest addition is Biscuit. We're not entirely sure what kind of mutt she is, but we think she may be a beagle/dachsund mix, maybe with a dash of something else. Biscuit didn't have a name when she came to us. She was given to us by the guy who sold us our new vehicle, and that guy never fed her. He'd picked her up somewhere and apparently tried dropping her back off, but she kept returning to his house. He hoped that by not feeding her, she'd just leave. The poor thing had obviously had puppies, but I'm not sure how recently. She was just skin and bones when we got her:



We've been doing what we can to rehabilitate her. Biscuit will definitely be spayed, if the vet thinks she's healthy enough to handle surgery. Poor baby didn't even really have enough body heat to keep herself warm, so I broke down and bought her a doggie-sweater, though I generally feel bad for victims of the whole pets-in-clothes thing. Her first sweater, an ugly hunting-orange thing, was stolen right off her back. Someone's been messing around our place pretty regularly again. We're working on nipping that in the bud. I was really upset that they'd take a sweater off a poor dog who obviously needed it. We bought her a new one, and so far, that's helping. Josh also built her and insulated dog house, and she and the other pups all got new pillow beds for Christmas.

We've only had her for a week and a half, but I think she's looking much healthier. I thought I saw actual improvement after only a day and a half!

( More pictures )

x-posting to farmers & organic_farms


Hello from the Mack Farm! I'm hoping that it will one day have an actual name, but for now, that'll do.

I know that a lot of my friends raise chickens, and I'd like to hear from you if I could. Or from folks who have raised chickens in the past. Our goal is to raise chickens listed on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy's critical list. A lot of people apparently don't realize that many livestock breeds, especially heritage breeds, are becoming endangered. These are the ones we hope to focus on here on our homestead.

What kind(s) of chickens do you have? Where are you located? What would you suggest to someone just starting out? We're hoping to order probably a straight-run in spring. We plan to start with a dozen of one breed. Extra cockerels would probably become broilers. After we know what we're doing, we'll probably invest in a couple of different breeds.

Missouri is cold! We're looking for breeds who are winter-hardy. I don't know how the summers are, though. I don't imagine it would be too awfully bad, but I do plan to look up info from the last few years. Maybe my MO friends can give tips there, too. We're also looking for breeds who are good with kids & pets. We hope to free-range them during the day, assuming we can teach all our critters how to behave around the flock. I'm still on the fence about whether we want broody or non-broody breeds. I'd probably prefer a breed that will happily hatch and raise its own chicks when we want more, as I don't think I want to shell out for a whole bunch of expensive incubation equipment right away. On the other hand, I don't want them fighting the kids when they go to collect eggs.

So what are your experiences with chickens?

x-posted from lineage_project

Dragcave Forum Topic Is Here

Now that I finally have the internet again, and with Christmas right around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to open my Haggis the Fearsome lineage up to the public. Haggis the Fearsome is my Yulebuck, and one of my very first eggs (I started DC on Christmas day last year).

I already have a request for a Yulebuck breeding from Haggis on Christmas, so I cannot promise any Yulebuck eggs. I'll be happy to breed him after Christmas if anyone wants an egg from him specifically.

A bit about Haggis (taken from his description):

All Christmas dragons embody the Spirit of Christmas, but there's something slightly off about Haggis. He embodies the Spirit of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Haggis has a chip on his shoulder because he was born with bright red stripes, and all of the other dragons used to laugh and call him names. He constantly got into fights as a hatchling and quickly gained the moniker "Haggis the Fearsome" after defeating the scroll hotshot, Han Sum, in three consecutive schoolyard battles.

Haggis usually smells of strong eggnog, and he loudly bemoans his holly-leaf wings whenever he's drunk. He rails against commercialism and will completely trash any yard he finds decorated with neon reindeer.

Haggis the Fearsome and all of his progeny, including ALL generations, have “So-and-So the Such-and-Such” names. I also cross lineages and am happy to breed with any lineage I have, so long as you keep all lineage names. Several people to whom I have given eggs agreed to breed for folks once upon a time, but you'll have to check with them directly if you want one of their eggs.

Here are the Haggis dragons. Most of mine have descriptions. I have NOT checked them all for inbreeding, so if that's an issue for you, let me know and I'll run them through the inbred check before breeding. Feel free to request a specific dragon/pairing/breed/lineage:


Haggis the Fearsome CB Yulebuck male; lineage patriarch

Curse the Sudden but Inevitable Female skywing; also part of Firefly lineage
*Unnamed Male pebble. I'm particularly proud of his even/double-rare lineage. If you have it, please let me know! Firefly lineage
*River-the-Confused-Assassin Female grey; Firefly lineage; owned by Ahkalia
*Unnamed Female grey; Firefly, Ridiculous, and it looks like possibly Dungeons & Dragons lineages. Owned by Malandar
*Two by Two the Hands of Blue Male grey; Firefly; owned by MrsPlinks

Inara the Ambassador Purple female; Firefly; Buddhist lineage

Haggis the Timid of Crystalmoor Female white stripe; owned by Sscott3825
*Princess Nenya Haggis Misnamed but still counts; unsure of owner. Since she and her children don't carry the lineage name, I won't list them all, but if you have any from this line, feel free to reinstate the naming.

Haggis the Dorkface Black alt male; Dorkface

Rabasa the Demon Child Female white stripe; Demon Child's lineage
*Angel the Demonic Female white; Demon Child's'; Angel lineage
*Hermeth the Peaceful(and unnamed children). Female white. Owner is unlisted, but I have zir in my records.

Hanbi the Dorkface Male vine; Dorkface

Haggis the Ridiculous Male almost-pb daydream; Ridiculous lineage
*Aesir the Ridiculous Daydream Female daydream; Ridiculous

Haggis the Magi Male magi

Haggis the Magnificent Male water
*Haggis the Lost Sailor Male water; Grateful Dead-themed, although it's not necessarily a lineage you have to keep.

Black egg Will be named upon gendering; Grateful Dead-themed.

If you want a Haggis dragon, you MUST keep the naming theme. I really prefer that following generations keep it as well. I was very disappointed to see that the theme was lost along the way, as I went nearly a year keeping it whole! I do understand that these things happen, especially if extras bounce to the AP. I always try to find specific catchers who will keep the theme if I get multi-clutches. If you find that you had one and didn't know, feel free to add yours here and I'll update the list.

Hello!

I'm posting to you from my very own house and my very own internet connection! I've caught up on emails and hope to catch up on the rest of LJ/FB/twitter/etc. sometime in the very near future.

For everyone who has asked and wondered about our new coordinates, thank you so much! I have an 'Emergency Contact' post that is permanently linked in the top of my journal, and my personal information is linked from there. If I know you in real life, or know you for a good while online and you've requested it, then you should be on my 'Emergency Contact' filter and have full access to my address, phone, etc. If you can't see that link and would like to, please let me know.

I have pictures of our new house linked up on a facebook album. I'm not sure if you have to have a fb to access it, but there's the link. Let me know if you can't see it and want to, and I'll either upload some to flickr or just make a proper picture post.

Slowly but surely, we're coming together.

Also, if you'd like to have some posts or phone calls from us, feel free to leave your own personal info in this screened post that is permanently linked in my sidebar.

I miss you.

Today is December 3. Since I don't have internet and haven't yet found a local hotspot, I'm not sure when exactly I'll be posting this. Before I get into our move, I'd like to just say that I got 39090 on NaNoWriMo by Nov. 30th's midnight. I didn't stop there, since I was in a groove. I wrote until one and got 40 thousand something. I really think I would have won if we hadn't been so incredibly busy with this move and the surprises that came with it. I'm really proud. I beat my NaNo best by three thousand, and I've never actually written 40k on anything ever. I got further plot-wise with my WonderSaga than I did in 36k last year, and I'm still working on it! Yay.

I really thought I'd win though.

At any rate, moving has also been slower than expected. Everything takes way more time and money than we'd anticipated! I've moved a lot in my life, probably more than the normal person. I reckon I've moved at least twenty times in as many years, maybe more. These last eight years in Leicester have been the longest I've ever spent in any one place. I've moved states, but usually I was only in charge of my room. The only time I ever moved states on my own was from Tennessee to North Carolina, and at least then, I was moving in with Josh and his then-girlfriend in an established home.

Being a real-life homeowner is different.

Time and money is the hardest. Josh is the fastest worker you're ever likely to meet, not counting those on coke or speed, and yet we are still puttering along way slower than expected. If not for the bit of money we got from mom, I now know for a fact that it would have been another good ten or twenty years before we ever escaped our little valley in NC. I expected stuff like inspections, home warranties, turning lights on, etc., and that was budgeted into our home buying budget. To an extent, I expected the other expenses, but not on this scale and they were definitely not budgeted. We've probably spent a good ten thousand above and beyond what we thought “buying a house” would cost, though a big chunk of that is moving truck rental and gas back and forth.

The electricity co-op humped us, since the last few months that the other people were here, their power bill jumped from about $80 to over $200. The co-op had to charge twice their monthly bill for our deposit, so that's almost $500 right there, and I'm still paying electricity, cable/internet, mortgage, & lot rent on the other trailer. Whee there, right? (Those should be canceled by the end of the month, if we get back to finish cleaning in time.) In addition to extra cleaning supplies, things to fix leaky sinks & showers, change of doorknobs for every door, etc., we've also had to invest in homeownery-type tools. We bought two chainsaws so we can work on clearing our land together. There's quite a bit to clear out. We bought a pressure washer, which we'll definitely need for cleaning out those old buildings. Josh got a drill, air compressor and nail gun, and various other tools that I'm not quite sure what they're for but Josh swears they've already come in handy.

Time is the other big one. Well, we live a good hour from any sort of Lowe's/Home Depot/Walmart, so when we realize we need something, it's like a half day excursion between shopping time and driving at least two hours to get there and back. Josh's jeep has only plastic in the back windshield, and I think it actually started snowing last night. Very cold business. We have not accomplished anything that we thought would be finished by now.

We tried to get back Saturday (Nov. 28). We made it here more around 1 pm (Central time, not Eastern) Sunday, and that was after driving through the whole night. Unloading the jeep took a chunk of time, and we fed Bo, our new dog that we inherited with the house. He wasn't starving, I'm pleased to say, even though we were held up about 48 more hours than we expected. Then we totally crashed at about six pm.

Instead of getting the house into perfect order, as I thought we'd come in doing, we had to make the long drive into Fredericktown Monday. I had insisted on the sellers putting down a thousand dollar deposit, since we had to wait 30 days for possession after we had bought the house, and we're unfamiliar with such things in NC. We were just too far away to feel completely comfortable handing over all of our money and just waiting. I'm glad we did it, but we had to drive to the realtor's office to sign off so they could get their money back, and then we had to hit Lowes and Walmart while we were in town. I needed a new mop and broom, because we hadn't had room to bring ours. We left it in NC for our next big cleaning trip. I had to buy more dishrags, since mine were all old and gross and used as cleaning rags in the old house. Etc., etc. Got home real late, after buying a pizza since all our kitchen stuff was still packed.

Tuesday and Wednesday, the first days of December, were a lot more productive with cleaning and setting up the house, but it takes so damned long! I worked half a day and only got the top cupboards above the sink clean. Oh my God, for a house that looks so much better than ours, it is SO grungy! I at least shine my sink before I do dishes, and clean my tub before we bathe. How can you clean yourself and your dishes in disgusting tubs? Do they even get clean that way? Flybabies might understand. This sink has never been shined, and I scrubbed the hell out of it. It's as shiny as I can get it, but there's still streaks of something stained down the sides. I don't even think they'd ever wiped the outside of the cupboards, especially around the handles, or the whole disgusting cupboard over the stove. Light switches or outlets, either. I've used innumerable scotchbrite scrubbies and nearly a whole bottle of Greased Lightning just trying to clean the dust and dried gunk off of the cupboards. Thank God that Josh is handling the bathrooms (I love my husband).

Speaking of bathrooms, we had leaks in both, so we knew that Josh would have to come in and fix the showers before any of us could bathe. He's finally got the gunk cleaned from our shower and garden tub, which he swears was grosser than the kitchen gunk, though I'm almost skeptical, that's how bad the kitchen was. I think some things might just be permanently stained, and we'll have to try to replace them if we ever start making money. At any rate, he swears that they're as clean as humanly possible, and he's got the leak fixed but now has to put on a new shower head because we didn't notice how gross the old one was. So not using that. We're all going to get to bathe again today, and even the kids are super-excited about that. They can't wait to try out the garden tub.

When we saw the trash pile they had out back (which they did remove, huzzah) and the half-assed way the additions had been done, we kind of knew that we'd be putting in some work. That's okay. Josh likes fixing things up, but it sucks when they just let a leak go that Josh was able to fix in two and a half hours, including caulk-drying time, or putting in a door so crappily that the insulation needs to be cut out from around it in order to open it. They didn't bother moving their many coat racks when they painted, so when Josh moved the one in Eden's room down so she could reach it, it had the old wallpaper beneath it. That's so lazy it's funny. We look forward to painting it our own way anyway, so that's not so bad. But after they moved, there were suddenly dead ladybugs everywhere, where the windows aren't flush in the rec room - which also isn't insulated very well if at all. Its very cold back there. Josh is going to fill in and weather strip everything that he can, and I've been reading about energy conservation and passive solar heating, so we're using this opportunity to try to make our little home as healthy and efficient as possible.

I think – and I'm not sure, because I can't look it up again to verify everything exactly – but I think the only real requirement for homeschooling in Missouri is to keep a journal/record of what you're doing. I've started that, and I'm also doing a little sketch in the corner of how the sun moves throughout the day. I have the shoddiest memory anyway (which I'm working on), so part of this is to help with all this solar energy through the season stuff I've been reading about, and part is being mindful of what lahermite was telling me when I first started gardening. She was much more aware of the natural order of things than I was, and she showed me a lot about setting up her home and garden, and I saw how she paid super close attention that first year.

The girls are really enjoying being farmgirls more than they'd expected. Ivy was particularly upset by the move, and Eden has always maintained that she was excited but it was still scary. From the first day, she's enjoyed running around outside with a passel of animals trailing after her. She's already bought hunting magazines and is super eager to go hunting in our forest. I told her that we have to learn how to do it legally, and we'll probably have to wait until after the house gets set up, so we might miss this season. Explaining the regulations and trying to learn about them together is a good family & unschooling experience, but she's very unhappy about that. It's nice to see her so eager/

We're still all sleeping on mattresses on the floor (need to find a place to rent a carpet shampooer), so she and sissy have been sleeping side by side in Eden's room. Ivy's still a bit nervous about having their own rooms, but I think she'll do well. That's the only thing she's still not sure about. She wants to stay with sissy, but Eden's old enough to want her own private place, and we have plenty of room for it. Ivy had one accident the night we got here wet the bed, which she'd started doing again before we left NC and we'd a big talk about. She hasn't had any more trouble and is happy staying in her own bed all night while it's next to Eden. I'm hoping she'll be comfortable enough once we get the beds set up. Ivy's going to keep the bunkbeds in her room, and Eden will pick out a new bed. I'm going to let Ivy get a new dresser so she can have something new and pretty to spruce up her room. We're going to paint them eventually and let the girls do them however they want. Eden wants hers pink, and she's already picked out a princess rug she wants, but Ivy's hesitant to do her room. I'm trying to ease her into the excitement of it, but we're not rushing it.

Achaiah, my oldest baby, is indeed meant for the outdoors. When she was a pup, I kept her outside except at night. When we moved to our trailer in Leicester, we weren't allowed to keep animals outside unless we were with them. I'd take her out quite a bit, and when I was in a particularly motivated stretch, we would go for daily walks down our road. I'm as glad to see her frolicking on a bunch of land as I am for the girls. She did well on all three of her rides she joined us on between NC and MO, and she is an exceptionally smart dog. We have a very special bond that I don't think any other relationship has matched. It's hard to explain in words, but I guess most everyone has had an otherworldly bond with a pet at some point. If you haven't, keep adopting and loving and it's bound to happen. Achaiah is happy to run around and roll in the dirt. She's taken very well to Bo. He was waiting for us here, and she jumped out of the truck and raised her hackles, and I just said “No” and petted Bo. That was it, he's part of the pack. She doesn't go near the road, and she stays right with us whenever we take a walk or go exploring.

Bo must not have been around girl dogs, because he's literally been up her ass the whole first few days, and he just doesn't know what to do with himself. We set the animals up with their bowls under one of the awnings on our outbuilding, and we had to give Bo his own big bowl, since he doesn't seem to know how to share. Either that or we did leave him with too little food for too long. He's about twice as big as Achaiah and eats way more than I'd expected. The only fight so far has been about food. He broke Achaiah's automatic feeder bowl and she's pissed at him. He may be twice her size, but she's the big dog in town.

Babyface has done well. She's the stray who adopted us. I was worried about her, after she'd fallen asleep in Josh's jeep without him knowing and woke up as they drove into the lights at the main road. She freaked and jumped out the back, and he realized it was Babyface and tried to find her. She was lost for about five days and came back just in time for our move. We got her a carrier, and she seems happy enough in Missouri, glad to be with us. We let her in once to see the house, and she sniffed at all our things and was happy to go back outside.

Cinder doesn't like it. She's been an inside cat her whole life, who'd been happy enough to escape outside through a whole in one window and go fight Babyface. Now that she's supposed to be outside, she really wants back in. She's too used to being Josh's lap warmer who gets petted all evening long. She's not happy to be outside, and I think it's actually colder here. But it makes her, Babyface, and Sable all get along better now that they all huddle in a warmth pile with Achaiah on the porch at night. Cinder was so funny when we finally let her in to check out the house yesterday morning. She sniffed everywhere with this crazy look and her tail straight up. She seemed satisfied to go back outside once she realized all our stuff was here, and the kids had their beds set up and were playing happily.

Sable, Babyface's kitty that we kept from her litter, is as unhappy as Cinder. At three months, she is apparently also spoiled as a house pet. As I was typing this up, she somehow found a hole and crawled in through our heating vents. Josh had to take it apart to get her out. Good thing we got the nail gun last night, because she broke it a little. I guess that's my fault for letting her come in to warm up this morning, after it got a bit frosty last night. Bo apparently likes to chase her up trees though, and then Josh has to rescue her. They're starting to get along better, but Sable would really much rather stay inside. I'm not letting them, though. I'm too allergic for that, and I want this house to stay nice.

Josh smiles a lot, and he called our home beautiful even as we scrubbed nasty. That's good to see. He can't wait to finish setting everything up so we can start focusing on the land. Me too.

Josh was on his way home, on my bike, and some asshole came flying down the road in his lane. Josh had to take the bike off the road or be run over, and he hit a bank and ended up taking her down in the middle of the road. In the middle of two curves at the crossroads of Gorman Bridge & Old Leicester Hwy, on freshly paved roads. He thinks one or both of his big toes might be broken, and Cherry's windshield is busted (I did need a new one anyway), but he thinks she's otherwise okay. He got her up again just as more cars started coming. The other guy didn't stop.

To celebrate 11/11, and also to procrastinate on NaNoWriMo, I have decided to share some more random things about me and my family.

1. I couldn't care less when the clock hits 11:11. No wishes for me; I'll take the stars!

2. Stars and space stuff stays on my desktop, screensaver, & slideshow when I'm working on the WonderSaga. (So that's like two continuous years now. It's grown on me considerably.)

3. I really want to take an astronomy class. And a guitar class.

4. I keep my taskbar at the top of my screen.

5. I've lived in several states, but we've stayed in North Carolina since I was seven. Moving to Missouri is going to be crazy exciting and scary. I'm not even entirely sure how to do it, and we still don't know what's going to happen with our trailer here. That's often our MO (har har), so I'm just hoping it falls into place the right way. Of course, last time we were this unprepared was our wedding, and most of you saw how that went.

6. Josh is super excited about becoming a farmer. I really hope we can swing self-sufficiency, because I'd hate to see him have to fight for jobs in the middle of nowhere, MO. I think he'd make a great farmer though. I'm really glad I ended up with a man who shares my crazy dream.

7. Eden is excited too, but Ivy is very nervous and scared about moving. She's really grown up a lot this past year, and I'm glad she can share her feelings so clearly nowadays. I'm trying to help her through it, as I did this a lot growing up. I understand. I think they're most upset about leaving lahermite and her kids. I am too.

8. Supposedly, we'll be getting a new dog with our new house. It's a white shepherd (the owner said German Shepherd. I'm not sure, but then I've never seen a white one either). Its name is Jasper. That's the name of Josh's old dog, from Achaiah's litter, who was poisoned a few years back. At the time, we thought it was parvo, but then several dogs in mom's neighborhood had been poisoned, and we'd stayed with her at the time.

9. I've been feeling my mom a lot lately. I don't know if it's because of Grandma's passing, or the thinness of the veil around Halloween. I didn't do a real ceremony, but I opened up myself for a journey as I laid in bed on Halloween. I got to visit mom. It seems like she's been staying around a bit more since then.

10. Last night, my NaNo wordcount was 18776. I'm doing better this year than I have any of the others. This is my third attempt at the WonderSaga, though the first one was half-hearted, and I'd actually done about 2,000 words on an unrelated story the year before that. I guess that would have been 05, and I'd just learned about NaNo in October. Last year, I went all month long for the first time, even though I didn't hit 50k. I think I might actually win this year, if I stay on track.

11. I think the reason I'm not on track right now is because I slept in, and now I'm not dressed to the shoes. I'm still trying to be a decent flybaby (it's my only hope for moving and doing NaNo at the same time). Now that Josh isn't working, he's actually giving silent prods when I forget, by getting his shoes on and making the bed. He encourages me to work on NaNo as long as I want, but we get into a good routine together. I love him! Things are going to work out fine. Time to get my shoes on and help make it happen.

I'm off to a good start! Day 1's word quota is 1667, and I'm already at 2221. Not as far as I wanted to be, but I'm on a pretty good roll. I hope to knock out as much as possible today, with a personal goal of hitting 5,000.

I'm going to share an excerpt! I'm making it public since some non-livejournal friends would like to read it. Livejournal buddies, please let me know if you want on my NaNo filter, because the rest of it will likely remain locked, if I post any more.

Remember, NaNo is about quantity and not quality. You are forewarned.

( Click for (a short) Chapter 1 )

Three hundred years after a near-apocalyptic world war, the people of Earth have created space habitats in order to survive the death of the planet. In 2626, the world's first generation ship is completed. The WonderSaga follows the 223 people who leave our solar system for the very first time.



I believe this is my third go round on the WonderSaga. Last year I made about of 35,000 words, which I'm pretty sure is the most I've ever written on anything. Given what a hard year last year was, and since I wrote all through November, I consider 2008 my win for my goal of “completing National Novel Writing Month.” This year, my goal is to win National Novel Writing Month. Despite the fact that we're supposed to be moving to Missouri, I really think I can make 50,000 words by the end of the month. *knock on wood*

I think I know my characters pretty well (the main ones I worked on last year, anyway), and this time I actually have some broad plot lines worked out. I've been piddling around on backstories and bios for two years now, so I'm really excited about writing and not wandering this year.

My cursor on my new laptop seems to spontaneously jump into the middle of paragraphs I've already written, so that will add an extra little dollop of challenge.

I've updated my super awesome NaNo Space Soundtrack. I've gotten profiles for everyone, I think, who volunteered their names for characters in this post.

Is anyone else participating? Or if you'd like to follow along as a supporter, let me know and I'll add you to my NaNo filter. If you can see this post, you're already on my filter. (Feel free to also let me know if you want off.)

Thank you all for all of your prayers and well-wishes.

My grandma's service was lovely. I hope to get some time to do a proper post. There's a lot to get out.

I miss her.

We packed up Tuesday to head home, and then we realized that our farm closing was this Friday. Today! So we headed to Missouri to be there in person. We even made it in time for Josh to be present for the inspection. Our most major issue is that we'll have to redo the septic. I can't seem to get away from the icky streams! We're still going to buy it...today at 4 pm central time. Woot.

I'm glad we're here in person, but I really wish it hadn't taken grandma's death to get my ass out here. :/

Well, just thought I'd keep you posted. Hopefully I'll see everyone again soon.

Well, looks like it's a no-go with our first choice. They weren't willing to pay the closing costs if we accepted their full offer, and we weren't willing to pay our full budget for a house where we'd still need to build outbuildings and an addition.

So, time to regroup and refocus. We have two second-choices, so now we have to decide which to offer on. I guess I need to call and make sure they're both still available. I do feel confident that we'll get a farm. If those fall through though, I'll just focus on finding a cheap lot for this trailer and getting that set up. The rest of my money can grow for a while, and maybe we'll be able to afford more on the next go round.

Either way, I still see this working for us. Thank you guys so much for all of your support!

Here is a post that is not just about finances or house buying. I've been preoccupied lately, so I'm trying to stay connected.

* They say money doesn't buy happiness, but since we've gotten the money and started shopping for our dream-farm, I have to say that my depression is waning. I still get very sad and feel guilty about being excited. I'm also sad & feel guilty that I never got to go do the vision quest I was planning, and now suddenly it's fall here in the mountains. I'm going to start meditating again, and I think I'm going to make Josh take us up to Sam's Knob and let me have at least a full day walking around by myself before we leave.

* I've gotten the house mostly back in order from our trips, and I've been a good little Flybaby each day while Josh is as work. I'm culling through our things and we will soon (today?) be in the packing stage. I'm being optimistic and seeing the house thing go through.

* Amidst all this madness, I'm considering trying NaNoWriMo yet again. I've never hit 50,000, but I've always had fun and gotten a bit further in my WonderSaga. I would hopefully be in the throws of moving, but we'll see.

* It occurred to me that if my story were ever a movie, I'd want that guy who plays Sam Winchester to play my favorite character. Now I'm fangirling over my own character.

* I did an intro post in the NaNoWriMo community, and I wrote the sentence “I'm recovering from grief by making all of my dreams come true.” I think this is very apt, and it might become my new mantra.

* If this Missouri house thing doesn't work out, it will be time for me to register our homeschool here in NC. I've been holding off, hoping we'd move first. Eden is six and a half now, so if we don't move in the next month or two, I'll have to go through the red tape here.

* She just showed me her drawing notebook. She has lots of pictures of the family, including all the animals. She also has lots of pictures of me and Josh riding motorcycles. I thought that was awesome.

* I feel mom a lot lately. Nothing specific; I just feel her around. I'm glad for that.

I just posted to my new finances filter. If you can't read that post and would like to be able to, please let me know.

This is the rundown. Pics will come later.

* Missouri is gorgeous. We definitely want to move there.

* The house we originally went to see was somewhat misrepresented. It looks like there's just way too much work needing to be done to make it worth the asking price, and the owner is apparently not as willing to negotiate as she said she was over the phone. We came away from that feeling very sad.

* We came back through and visited three more properties on the way home. One is seriously under consideration, although both the neighborhood and the entire town were awfully littered with trash. I mean debris piles abandoned everywhere and the woods appear to be a favorite trash can for pop bottles and old tires – and worse things at one of the homes. Josh would really like to live in the one nice house we found (10 acre, 3 bd, 2 ba permanent MH with additions), but I'm not sure I can get past the massive trashiness of the general area.

* We will probably be looking online for more Missouri properties and planning another (better prepared) trip out there for viewings.

* So looks like I'll have to up my housing budget if we want any kind of good home. That sucks, because I need money for other things like fixing our teeth and the trailer we do have.

* Grandma seemed much better after we arrived. As Josh put it, she got her rosiness back and a bounce in her step. He's agreed to let me look for a cheap fixer-upper in her area of IL, so I can have a place to go stay closer to her more often.

* She is getting much worse with her memory, which saddens me. Grandma was always so sharp. She still is, to an extent. I don't mind hearing the same stories several times in a row. She has awesome stories.

* Grandma finally admitted that she thinks she had a mild stroke while she was down here while mom died. She described what happened to her, and it broke my heart. I am praying that she recovers better. I'm really afraid of what happens if her memory worsens instead of improves.

* She can tell you anything that happened fifty years ago or more, though. Twice, she told us about some lady who pissed her off sixty-five years ago, and I finally understand where I got my temper from.

* I will never attempt another vacation with my sister. It was actually one of the worst vacations we've ever had, until she went bat-shit for no good reason and caught a plane home. Things immediately improved for us. That makes me sad. She didn't even show any gratitude for any of the stuff we went out of the way to do so she could come. She just bitched and was disrespectful to all of us the whole time. We probably won't be speaking for a while, to be honest.

* On the plus side, my other sister had her offer on a house accepted during the week! She's waiting for the inspection to go through, and then she should be closing early next month. She'll be in Wilmington, but she's always wanted to live at the beach and so I'm happy for her. She's still not happy for me and Missouri, but oh well.

* Babyface, the new outside cat, had her kittens while we were gone. Josh will have to find them. We think they're up under the shed, which means that it'll need to be emptied out and somehow jacked up so he can get to them before they go feral. On the plus side, now that I have some cash, I'll be able to get Babyface fixed just as soon as allowed after having her litter.

* Bikers in Illinois do not wear helmets. It scares me to no end. I kept getting flashbacks of poor Momma's head. Even if I lived there, I would never travel seventy miles an hour with no helmet. I was seriously so scared the whole time, and they were everywhere.

* Some asshole at the knife store (Davis Specialties, I think) in Clinton, Iowa had the nerve to call me a bad mother – directed at Eden! They had each taken one of his lollipops and we were fixing to go eat lunch next door, so I told them they couldn't have a second. He gave one to Ivy behind my back, and I saw her opening one and took it away. She started crying, so I led her out the door, since that's what I do when my kids start pitching a fit in public. As I was heading out, I heard him say, “She's a bad momma, huh?” or something like that (might have been “isn't she?”) I yelled, “Excuse me?” and then hollered for Josh to get Eden, as I would have gone on a rampage and unplugged his oxygen tank and thrown it in his face. Josh didn't buy anything, and he'd been wanting to go back to that store since we found it two years ago.

* Lyz then started shit with me for actually getting upset about that, so then she and I got into a fight. A few days later, Josh convinced me to go back to that store and promised that he would defend my honor and give that guy a stern talking to. He ended up spending 45 minutes browsing and then telling dude on the way out that his wife was mad about what he'd said the other day (without even mentioning what that was, by the way). This caused an enormous fight between us. I still haven't forgiven him, and likely never will. This makes three or four times that someone has seriously insulted me and Josh never defends me.

* My kids, who had been having some behavioral problems in the weeks leading up to the trip, only got worse on the trip. They don't listen for shit anymore. Things did improve though once Lyz left and we didn't have her constant bitching and passive-aggressive whining egging them on. They're both still getting physically violent, though. Two nights in a row I grounded them and we didn't get to swim in the pool they made me shell out for.

* This means I don't want to take anymore family vacations for a very long time. So we'll have to find a babysitter for several days if Josh and I want to go look at more properties. It's hard concentrating on the houses when I'm having to corral the kids and keep them acting half-way decent.

* There were other issues that I may address in a friends-locked post. This was seriously not our best vacation ever, but Grandma asked me to hurry and I went straight there as soon as I could. I don't regret it. Visiting my family really helped recenter me and allowed me to regroup a little bit in ways that I haven't been able to since my mommy was here. I really need to be closer to them. Even when it's bad, being with them so helps my sanity. Grandma means the world to me, and my cousin Cole has been one of my best friends forever. My aunts and uncles are legion and the coolest.

x-posted

I joined the gardening community not too long ago, and it's been inspiring me to get back on track with my garden. I've been sharing our adventures with my facebook friends, but I thought I should share here on lj too.

Right now we live in Western North Carolina, in a mobile home that's on roughly a half acre lot. We're using the smaller side of our yard for our garden. I've tried and failed at gardening several times over the years, but I've really tried to buckle down this past year. We're currently in the process of trying to buy a home. Our dream has always been to have a self-sufficient farm, so it was really important to me that I harvest something besides way too many radishes (my only success until now). Our children are old enough that they've been a big help, both in the garden and in making sure I get out there regularly. I haven't been working this past year and we unschool, so we've had a lot of time to devote to it.

We started planting right at the end of March, and then the last snow hit on April 1. We covered the onion bed and the salad bed, but the salad bed didn't make it. It took me three more tries, with inside germination, before we finally got that salad bed to take. Our tomatoes and peppers are pretty late, but we've had plenty of lettuce. I also learned to stagger my lettuce planting from now on, because we're running out just as the cherry tomatoes started ripening.


( Quite a few pictures )

Tomorrow through Saturday, circletpress will be having an author chat with Elizabeth Schechter.

I have read Circlet Press and I have read Elizabeth Schechter. Good stuff! I can even happily claim to have written with her, and she is loads of fun. Check it out.

Go, ladysmith!