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.

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.

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.

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.

Eden: Mom, can we have a celebration?

Me: Every day's a great day for a celebration! What did you have in mind?

E: You know, like a party?

Me: Okay. Well did you want to invite people over, or just make something special, or do gifts? I mean, what did you have in mind?

E: Ooh! Let me go get my notebook, and I'll show you.

At this point, Eden runs away and comes back with her notebook and starts flipping through pictures. I say how they're good, and she says:

Oh, Ivy drew those. She got my notebook. This is Ivy's...this is Ivy's...this one...Oh, here's one of mine! It's about me training Cinder.

Me, a bit shocked: What is that? No Ivy?

E: Um, no, that's just a face.

Me: It's a face all circled and slashed out, with a big “No Ivy” written beside it.

E: Oh, oops...that wasn't what I meant to write.


(For the record, her plans were a party for Cinder. She included homemade decorations, balloons, a tunnel & slide that turns Cinder invisible, and "No Puppy". Achaiah can come, because she's a dog, not a puppy.)

Eden got her first library card this week. We checked out an Encyclopedia of Reptiles & Amphibians (to learn about our lizard friend in the garden), an Encyclopedia Brown book, and another Little House book, These Happy Golden Years.

Then yesterday, Beltane, she up and declared, "We need to have a Boo Boo ceremony tonight." So I readily agreed and told her we'd try to have a fire that night. Later on though, Lyz called and invited us over to her new place (and made us dinner). I had forgotten I'd promised Eden a ceremony until she reminded me, so even though it was past bedtime when we got home, I told her we'd stay up and do one. It was too late for a big fire like we'd planned, but Josh lit a coal in his little rock fire-bowl thing he has. Eden ran in to get her basket, as she already had everything prepared!

She'd written four notes for Boo Boo (that's my mom, by the way). I didn't look at them since it was dark, but I saw they had drawings and stuff on them. Eden said she'd written them in secret ancient writings that only totems and guides can read. She said a prayer to start the ceremony, and then I shook my rattle to call in our guides. She gave a note to me and Josh, and she got two since sissy was asleep. We all said a word to mom and offered the notes to the fire, and it was really very beautiful. I could really feel her presence, and I told Eden what a proud grandmother she was. Eden said she could feel her hugs. I could too.

Easter

We dyed Easter eggs with onion skins, following the directions I found here. I don't use a lot of onions, so we didn't have a whole bunch of skins, but I still like the way they turned out. And so much better for the kids!

Teaser:



( No dragons, although Ivy insists some of them are dragon eggs )

When we woke up this morning, Eden yelled, “Hooray! I've always wanted to be six!”

I think I'll always consider her birthday my “Mommyversary”. Every morning on her birthday I wake up and think something like, “Well, my water broke by this time six years ago.” I love that I remember all of my births with pride. I look forward to showing Eden the pictures and going over the story again. I love how that nervous feeling of excitement becomes perfectly present in my tummy again.

I'll do her birthday pictures later, but for now I would just like to share my birth story for all my new friends who might not have seen it before. There are some naked birthy pics, and although I don't really consider that 'not safe for work' (says the doula), I guess I should warn for naked me any time that happens.

"People asked me if I was afraid and I laughed. Are you kidding? I'm a birth goddess. I didn't doubt for a second. It's what I was made for."

I never felt old, before last year.

I found my first silver hair in August 2006. I remember this, because I was driving to Florida for ladysmith's birth and I found a beautiful shiny thread on the upper left of my head. I loved it. I always thought I would look great with salt-and-pepper – or even silver or grey! - hair.

My mom was one of those women who fear and hate aging. She never celebrated her birthdays, and I couldn't understand it. She cried when she turned forty. Actually, she may have cried at thirty, too. It always made me sad, and I said I'd never feel that way about getting older. I enjoy the thought of getting older, torn between the vision of aging gracefully like an infinitely wise crone and being the crazy lady who screams expletives and chases children past her yard with a potato launcher. Either way, I look forward to it.

That said, I didn't expect it to happen so darn quickly. I also remember the first time I actually felt old. It was May 9, 2008. My wedding day. I was dressing and putting on make-up in the hospital bathroom, a private one I had scoped out for just this occasion. It had that wonderful florescent lighting that let me see each and every crevice in my face. There were more crevices since I'd first arrived after mom's accident. By the time I was in the unforgiving bathroom, preparing for my marriage ceremony, we'd already made the decision to pull life support the next day. I took a deep breath and looked at myself, and it wasn't my normal face. Everyone always said I looked like mom with dark hair. When I took a breath and looked at myself that day, I looked like Grandma with dark hair.

Those grief-lines have abated a bit, or maybe I just wear them better. If you'll recall, my sisters and I went out for a salon day afterwards and got cut, colored, the works. They hadn't noticed, but I'd noticed that during that long week, my one silver hair had turned into a head full of grey. I recently cut my hair again, but I wanted to cut the color out, not touch it up. Some of my highlights are still there. My first bright silver hair is back. I stopped at Tina's house Friday after going to the laywer's, just to drop off some of her things I'd gotten from mom's. I only stayed a minute. As she hugged me goodbye, Tina gasped and her chin dropped. She reached out, grabbed it, and whispered, “You have a silver hair!” I totally saw her thoughts ripple across her face. First she was shocked to see it, then she looked at me and realized for the first time that I had aged, and then she realized that meant she had aged. (Her birthday is next week, only twenty-five. Still, I know I read it right.)

I laughed and said, “I had that one a while ago, remember? There are more, but I think they're still colored at the moment.” She just nodded and said quietly, “I remember. Sorry, I was just surprised.”

“I know.”

But today...oh God, today, I believe I went and threw my back out. I bent over and lifted one leg to put through my panties, and boy, that was IT. My lower back on my right side just spasmed uncontrollably and I had to grab the bathroom counter to catch myself. It reminded me of when I was in labor with Ivy. I couldn't stand back up. I managed to finish dressing and stumbled to fall on my bed. We had to go to the store, as we were nearly out of most things but especially toilet paper, so we went to Walmart and tried to stock up on some of the cheaper things. I thought walking a bit would help, and at first it did, but after I sat down to drive home, it was so excruciatingly worse when I got out of the car. Josh tried to get me to buy a freaking cane to help me in Walmart and I refused to do it, and now I'm wishing I had. Maybe I'd be House-sexy.

I am not an infinitely wise old crone yet, and with this pain, I'm certainly not up for chasing anyone with potato launchers. Right now I'm a twenty-seven year old girl who feels like an eighty year old woman. I hurt. And my crevices are coming back.

No luck on the employment front yet. I've been sick all month, and every time I start to shake it, I catch it again. In between, I'm trying to get the house back in order. I really need to finish going through all mom's stuff and get it put away or out. It seems like every time I start to get the house in order, I catch sick again for 2-3 days, and then it falls apart. But we're working on it, and little by little, it's getting back in shape. I'm fluttering with the Flylady. Kids are helping, for the most part.

Eden's been really focused on reading, spelling, and math. She's making books a lot, both 3-D and on PBSkids.org. Then Ivy sat down yesterday and asked how to spell something, I can't even remember what it was now, and she actually wrote the letters! Eden had to show her what a "k" was. I wish I could find that paper, but I don't know what she's done with it. I'm pretty proud. With unschooling, we don't really sit down and try to push this stuff on the kids. We show them when they ask us how, and this is what they're both keen on learning right now. It's great.

Ivy has fallen in love with The Hobbit. I've had a poster for many, many years, and I put it in the kids' room when we fixed it up. Josh told them an abridged version as the bedtime story. I read the book, but I was ten and my memory isn't great. Josh saw the movie as a kid, and he has a photographic memory. So anyway, Josh asked me to see if I could find the old cartoon. I ordered it off of Amazon, and we showed the girls. Josh had already made them shields, but he made them each wooden swords after they saw the movie. Eden called Sting, but Ivy named hers Stinger. She's got a permanent quest for giant spiders now, and she's asked to start dressing like a Hobbit. I guess our pirating days are over. Oh well, we had a good run. I would actually make a fine hobbit.

This week's therealljidol topic was chosen by my f-list. Thanks, guys!


I'm a Christian, but I'm certainly not your mainstream Christian. When I went to church, I went to a Unity Church, although I now do my celebrating at home. My personal rituals are a mixture of many different techniques – my Christian background comes into play, as does Medicine Reiki, shamanism... Really anything I've picked up somewhere that has personally resonated, I use.

When we left our church, it became really important to me to include my daughters in my spiritual activities. I've tried to raise them with an understanding and respect for God and Universe. Kids get these things; they really do. Maybe not on deep philosophical levels, but Spirit resonates for children just as well as adults. My children are five and three, and we've been discussing God and life since (before) they were born.

At first, I tried introducing an altar to bring some conscious honoring into our daily lives. Moms, I'm sure you can guess what happened. Our little table (er, upside-down banana box), so lovingly set up with print, crystals, sticks from our faerie tree, and little bowls of rice and water, quickly became the hot spot for books, dirty clothes, tiny McDonald's toys, and extra crayons. Rather than lovingly taking our offerings out to the faerie tree each day, I found myself ritually picking rice out of my carpet and shooing the cat away to her own water.

The altar was cleared off, turned upside down, and became a giveaway box for all the extra toys that had previously been piled upon it.

I still haven't given up, though. For a while, I got slack about my own spirituality – our spirituality. Seeing my kids continue to struggle as badly as me after my momma's death really made me realize that I needed to get our family back on track.

We had our first “family ritual” on Winter Solstice. Josh doesn't often join me in such endeavors, but we planned this one together. It was a Healing Ceremony for the girls, and no mistake! One of the important things about creating your own ceremonies is that you really need to have a set intention. It's almost all about intention. With that one, I wanted to make sure it was something that would engage my children: we made a big fire outside, drew out all of our darkness that we wanted to release, and went out as a family to throw them to the flames together. Afterwards, we filled in that empty spot with the sweetness of roasted marshmallows.

My kids have been healthily happy ever since. It wasn't a miracle cure for grief, that's for sure, but even children are empowered by taking their healing into their own hands.

That ceremony was quite a success, and the girls have asked us to do them more often. I'm so glad that they're excited about it! And we homeschool, so I'm excited about the educational aspects as well as the spiritual and bonding aspects.

My youngest, Ivy, has been having some health issues lately. Tonight, we're holding a healing ceremony for her. I understand that ritual is also important, but I don't want our ceremonies to be the same every time. I like to ask them to check in with their hearts and determine what feels right and needed.

As mom, I get to do the same. For instance, I've explained why it's so important to me that we clean up the room before we ceremony in it. We must bless our house and clear the space for the energy to move. The girls pitch in, usually with minimum griping. (It really helps to call it “blessing the house” and not “cleaning the house”.)

We used purifying fire last time, so I thought we'd center around a different element this time. I want to make a healing oil to anoint her with. My kids love that sort of thing. I've caught them making potions with my bath salts and bubbles before. I plan on pouring a little oil into a bowl and letting them add whatever herbs they feel will give Ivy healing power.

When we're ready, I'm going to let Ivy smudge the room with Sweetgrass, and then Eden may smudge the people with Sage. Kids love smudging! We'll consecrate a blanket for the floor, to lay on. All of us will say a little prayer for Ivy and anoint her with oil, then she'll lay down and we'll do a nice family Reiki session for her.

If the kids are in the mood for anything else, we'll do that too. Ceremony is all about moving with the Spirit, after all!

I do have a more devious plot than marshmallows this time. The doctor told Ivy that she needs to work on drinking more water and eating more vegetables if she wants to be healthy. So after Ivy's healing portion is done, we'll move to the kitchen where the girls can smudge the squash I have in the fridge (it really needs to get eaten up), and I'll even teach them how to chop them. We'll pour the rest of the unused, health-imbued oil into a pan and saute up some veggies! I've learned that once children cook it themselves, they'll really eat anything.

The trick about including kids in ceremonies is that is needs to be fun, and it doesn't hurt for there to be an immediate reward of some sort. It doesn't have to be sweets – it's as easy as mom or dad saying, “Hey, your energy was awesome tonight!” Try it different ways. Let the children lead if they have ideas of their own.

It's fun. It should be fun. Still, before you begin, it's important to invoke Sacred Space in some way. Children will respect Sacred Space. In fact, I personally feel that it's quite important to teach them how to center into that still space while they're still young. Do it through breathing, saying a prayer, or simply standing together, holding hands.

Always close out and end with gratitude. Phrase it in a powerful way: “Thank you for Ivy's health and wholeness!” rather than “Thank you for helping our poor, sick girl.” If you've called in your guardian angels or guides, thank them for their support. Thank each other, especially if someone did something that really moved you.

Plan ahead of time, because children have notoriously short attention spans and will likely give up the ceremony idea if they're waiting around for you. At the same time, be willing to abandon your plans if your children take you in a different direction. If you're introducing a new concept, like anointing, explain how different religions have used this technique over the centuries. If you've just made something up and thrown it together, at least explain why you felt drawn to do it that way. Explain to them in simple terms what it means to “focus in your heart, and not your head” or to call in your guides.

Ceremonies don't need to last a long time, and they don't have to be 'just so' or they won't work. Let Spirit move through you and show how people can easily work with Spirit. If your candle won't stay lit, laugh and say, “Guess Universe wants us to use more air than fire, eh?” If your pet jumps in the middle of things, thank her for coming to lend her energies. Ceremonies at home are perfect places for giggles! It shouldn't be a sit-down-and-shush situation. Remember to always end on a happy note. And have those kids help you lovingly put everything away afterwards!


This is my week 17 entry for therealljidol. If you enjoyed it &/or found it helpful, please vote for me when the polls open tonight or tomorrow. Thank you!

My computer died on me today. Yes, my new one.

Luckily, after letting it cool for a while (it got mega-hot, and it almost never gets hot), I was able to do a recovery. I'm making my long overdue back-up cds now. I was scared into action on that one.

I am eternally grateful to everyone who looked at my post and voted for me in therealljidol. I made it through! I'm happy to learn it, although very sad at how many of my favorites didn't make it.

Does this mean we'll lose 12 this week? I shudder to think.


My dad is living in Asheville now. He's staying with Tina and will be looking for work here. I wish him luck. Josh hasn't had any yet. I'm glad we'll get to see him more often though.


Eden lost both front teeth one night after the other. She's excited. She's also decided she's putting the profits of that towards a trip to Hawaii. She and Ivy have decided that's our next vacation. I wish them the best of luck at it.

I'm excited about the inauguration tomorrow. If we don't miss it due to Ivy's doctor appointment, I plan on using it for a good homeschooling lesson. Maybe it's a good time to do the kids' healing ceremony that I was thinking of starting.

I'm glad my computer turns back on. I hope it stays. That makes three of us whom I know are battling this very issue right now. Crazy.


Care to click?

I just deleted ten pages worth of spam from our wedding website guestbook. That was about 100 times more comments than we actually got. I may update it. Maybe not.

If you want the actual wedding, it's here in this friends-locked post. Long, though.

Silly me, searching for pictures in the middle of the night. All I do is piss myself off.

We're supposed to have a real wedding this year. I'm not even sure it'll happen anymore.

Humor is sexy. So many of my friends went for the “bad boys”, but I've always went for the ones who made me laugh. As I mused over this week's therealljidol topic, Cracking Up, it occurred to me that seven out of ten boyfriends were chosen because of humor. (Two, desperation, and one was a dare for the both of us.) I couldn't even tell you how many of my unrequited loves were due to their sense of humor, but far more than for looks or skill, I can tell you that.

I remember my first real boyfriend and the exact moment I realized I liked him as more than a friend. We rode the bus together, and I got on that morning crying over something my stepfather had done. He immediately jumped up and moved seats, to sit across from me and make me laugh. I still consider it one of the sweetest things a man has ever done for me.

My husband has made me laugh every single day we've been together. Even before we were dating, his laugh was my favorite thing about him. And I know we make some darn cute babies, but it's how we all laugh together that really makes me love my family.

Kids are even better than funny men, in my opinion, because they're not trying to be funny. Their funny is the purest form of it. To me, nothing is better than Eden declaring that Vicks VapoRub smells like volcano, or Ivy coming in from the snow and declaring, “Brr! I'm frozen salad!” I don't even think I would have kept our cat Cinder if she didn't make me laugh every now and then.

So on the topic of humor, it really just boils down to one thing for me:

Smile more often. It makes you look beautiful.

Merry Christmas!

I got pearl earrings, which I think is my first Xmas jewelry as well as my first pearls! I'm very excited. I've always wanted some pearls. Josh is such a sweetie. He even said he looked for black pearls, which are my favorites, but he was not happy with the ones he saw. That's okay; I'm happy with the ones I got!

Steph is a sweetie, too! She is weetastic to the extreme. Not only did she get me Keller Williams, she got me KW's Stage. I've wanted that for so long! Two discs, baby, and both live. Hooray!

My family is currently lost to me. Somewhere along the way, Santa snuck in a Guitar Hero game. Josh is supposed to be teaching Eden, but I haven't seen her get to touch it yet. :P Ivy is eating her healthy Christmas apple from the comfy seat of her very own Jeep.

Pictures later.

I hope your seasonal holiday of choice was spectacular!

Edited: because, hey, I didn't know both disks were live. Awesome.

It's been incredibly hard for me to narrow down my favorite story for this week's therealljidol entry. I've been reading and writing for as long as I can remember. I grew up devouring books and writing my own. It was something I did for fun, until second grade, when Mrs. Moore told me I had talent and helped me get my first story published. Then it became a way of life. That one story stands out in my memory, but, like most authors with their earliest work, I can hardly claim it's my favorite.

I have my fandoms and all that makes me squee, but those are fluffy fun. I feel a person's favorite story tells a lot about who they are on a soul-level, so which, out of all of them, could possibly be my very favorite?

Of course we have our family stories that get passed down, which always warmed my heart and made me laugh. Grandma came from cotton fields, was a riveter in the War, and sang a bit on the radio; Uncle Ron, who was hit by not one, but two trains; Uncle Pat and Uncle Mike burning down the old family home and losing their eyebrows in the process (yet the whole town pretended not to know it was them, since everyone knew Grandma and Papa couldn't afford to do anything with it). I remember my mom's stories of her youth in the Seventies, which served to keep me fairly straight edge up until I lived on my own. The story of how mom's channeling started is still one of my favorites, but that's already been told here.

Then there are the stories of my new family. My family. There's the story of how Josh and I accidentally became a family without either of us realizing what was happening (we were roommates – and then somewhere along the way, it just changed). My birth stories are definitely some of my favorites, but I've also already told both of those here. There's my wedding story, which was horribly disappointing, but one of the most true and powerful memories of my life. That's too private for this, I think. It's available on my friends list, if you're interested. My recent trips to Strawberry Fields is something I waited for my whole life, and I have yet to tell you here. It was one of the most energetically powerful things that's happened to me. But, still, none of these offer themselves up as the Ultimate Awesome One.

I've been racking my brain all week long. I nearly took a Bye over this, until I realized that it keeps coming back to the same story.

I usually tell the bedtime stories to my kids: we've been reading through the Little House books, I give dramatic retellings of childhood fairy tales (that means I like to add random craziness in, telling it in a slightly different way each time), and I often create personalized fairy tales that center around Princess Eden and Princess Ivy overcoming some obstacle and learning an important lesson. In August, when we 'started kindergarten', I tried something new with my girls. I gave each of them the opportunity to tell the bedtime story. Now, I don't like playing favorites over my kids, but Ivy's really impressed me. Eden told an awesome tale of saving the kingdom from an evil witch, and I thought it was a delightful story with some pretty good tension building. But I think I expected less of Ivy, since she was just shy of three, and her story made a warm fuzzy place in my heart that has only grown since.

Once upon a time, she told us, there was a little princess named Ivy. Princess Ivy went to the Faerie Tree, so she could go to Faerie World where everything is magic and pretty. She saw lots of faeries, but she was there for Mommy. She went up the big mountain, looking for flowers for Mom. Magic flowers. She found them and picked them, but they're magic so they won't die. She brought them home to Mom, and they were pretty, and then she gave her a kiss. The End.

Yeah, that one's definitely my favorite.

I made it home safely, albeit much later than we anticipated. Then I ended up sleeping most of the day! Wowza!

I'm going to try to post the rest of our fun from both trips. Both lessthan90sheep and I *and* the family had loads of fun. I'm still glad to be home, though.

I know you're dying to learn all about the Museum of Sex & Equus, and I'm dying to tell you about Strawberry Fields on such a day like today. I'll try to at least post that one, if I can wake up enough. (RIP John!)

In the meantime, feel free to peruse the anonymous entries for Week 1 of ljhaikuidol. There are only nine competitors, so it looks to be a short season...and it only takes about 5 minutes to read and vote! The polls close Friday.

See you soonish!

The world's oldest person has died. As I read things like this in the headlines, I always say a little prayer and offer healing to the departed. I thought I would share and pass that on here.

I strongly believe that people's love/prayers/energy/thoughts help others as their souls cross over. I've been around birth a lot, and though I'm fairly new to death, they seem to me to be very similar as far as being life's biggest, strongest, most powerful transitions. I think my mom's crossing was extra powerful because so many people were praying for her. I think that kind of outpouring of love helps offset fear, pain, and confusion.

When I think of people like Edna Parker, who has lived longer than most of us could ever hope to, it brings with it a very humbling thought. Do you have any idea how many people she's impacted in her life?

She was a teacher before getting married and becoming a housewife, too, so once more with feeling: Do you have any idea how many people's she's impacted in her life?

I see how my three and five (and a half) year olds have impacted strangers, and I'm glad that (for the most part) we've instilled respect and common courtesy into them. I'm only twenty-seven (and a half) and I know I've had an impact on the world. It's also a humbling thought, but it's true for every one of us. Some, I've impacted badly. I've done my best to apologize and make up for those, and I've been all right with keeping daily maintenance on the forgiveness process. Some, I've impacted wonderfully. I know this because some of you have let me into your homes/births/hearts/families. (And believe me, that means a lot when I'm feeling down.) My mom was only fifty, and yet she had touched so many, and so deeply. Brenden Foster was only eleven, and yet his kindness and generosity of spirit is at this very moment continuing to feed homeless all over the world.

So it is my sincere wish that you take a moment when you hear about someone who's passed on, or right then and there when someone really impacts you, take that moment to give them the love, prayer, and support that they deserve. Pour it on out to their families and everyone else who's ever been blessed by them. Even if you don't believe in the afterlife, just take a minute to give them a warm and fuzzy hug for their work here.