Do you need more creativity?

Somehow I got on Quilting Daily's e-mail list. I think I wanted to look at a pattern, had to join to see it. So that was the subject line on one of their e-mails. I don't think I need any more creativity. I already have so much I can't keep up with it.

The desire to take your head off while in the throes of a nasty migraine is far too common a feeling to count as creative. The stage of being able to fall asleep if only I weren't at work is a relief - can't I sleep? I have more in the van that I pulled out of the trailer this morning. It's hot, I don't feel good, I don't wanna go outside to get anything. Seriously, can't I nap? I'd feel ever so much better. OK, maybe chocolate would help?

My son can be intriguingly creative, too. He and Steve put a piece of particleboard in the van way back when Steve was driving the thing. The thought was that the back seat would lay down, there would be room for us to put a mattress in, take off for a weekend. The seat didn't lay down as thought, so it never did work that way. Somewhere between the last 2 yrs and everything I've been hauling back there over the last 6 weeks, it finally developed a jagged hole - right in the middle. Steve said it had gone in at a slant, it should come out that way. Wasn't working, no matter which way we tipped it. Ben realized that the seat was installed AFTER the particleboard..... uh-oh! So I asked if we could cut it, and his response was to pull the chainsaw out from behind the front seat and proceed to do just that, as D and I stood and laughed. Hey, it worked!

The pieces are up at D's, since that's where we'll be using such stuff. I had her laughing when I said it's forbidden to go up there empty handed. "What about when you're living here?" No, that's a different question. Oh, goody, I can stuff more stuff in. Ben told Steve last night that the trailer's down to about 30% full, and it never was more than 80% cuz I'd been keeping a messy stack right in front of the door to put off the local vandals. Then I topped that by telling him that I have a goal of emptying it enuf to move bfore next rent's due.

There was a thunderstorm last night, and even though there were a couple of guys shining flashlights into our yard again, for once nobody got into the trailer or shed. There have been law enforcement people in Kevlar vests showing up where those guys live, license plates for agencies we don't recognize.... we don't know, we don't want to know, just leave us alone and out of that! I did go out and let them know I was aware of their flashlights while getting the laundry, at 11:30pm, knowing that between lightning, thunder & migraine, Tuesday was already not looking good. It was a good thing I got the laundry, because we got a gully washer that lasted about 4hrs, left nice big puddles.

We're using so much that's 'found' or re-purposed it gets funny. Fencing, lumber, insulation, stock tank that's already up at D's, other things we've had....Saturday, we decided that the feeders we were using for the chicks were really too small, needed to be replaced. But the bigger, suspended, galvanized ones at the feed stores are $25 each. So what else can we do? As we were brainstorming, I realized that I had a bunch of empty coffee cans saved for an idea of mine that the guys didn't fall in with. Du-uh!

Monday morning, D, Ben, and I made new feeders. Triangular holes punched in the bottoms of the cans with a bottle opener, some $store pie pans, a scrap of wood, a screw, - et Voila! D said we got 3 for the price of one from the feed store. Huh? Oh, she was counting the original cost of the coffee. She has a point, although Ben and I weren't counting that as 'cost'.

I'd already gotten tired of storing them and punched holes with a big church key to use some as planters. I have 2 tiny avocado trees in one, and some ginger. I'd been practising benign neglect on those, just watering and ignoring, in hopes I'd be pleasantly surprised. Now that I know what ginger looks like, I can pull the thing in that pot that's a weed. What I'm going to do with these delicate warm climate plants over the winter, I don't know yet. I'll figure that out as we go. I still have more of the coffee cans.

I keep taking stuff out of the trailer; I'm even throwing things away. There is, of course the inevitable "Oh, is that where I put that?" There must have been some good reason I kept empty boxes that are in sad shape now. And the HRB stuff - well, I'd have to start all over again if I went back to HRB, so why should I keep coursework? The extra kitchen stuff, I think I'll just leave in there until after we get it moved. We bought it to use when we could have animals, garden, etc; that's why it's been stored.

New baby goats

"D" just called; the goat that we thought was going to kid Sunday afternoon finally did. I thought she'd twin; she did. I have yet to see them, but there's a grey one that looks like her, and the other's a tan like the other nanny and her kid who came from the same herd. That herd sire's also tan. From the looks of it, the kids will be bigger than their mothers. We didn't like the management methods of the woman where we got these goats, nutrition was lacking, too frequent breeding, etc. It looks like the kids are getting better nutrition than their mothers already, and they're only getting the tall grass that was there already and a salt block.

Road construction

Change may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean I have to like all of it. Some, I have a hard time seeing as good, or necessary, etc. The office/retail complex where I work is being remodeled outside. There are 2 huge planter boxes at the bottom of the stairs I climb every day to get the mail. They were dug up early spring with a backhoe, have been nothing but bare dirt and weeds for months. Don't know why they couldn't have left the plants to bloom, since that's all that was done. Now the Colorado Blue Spruce, all 5 of them, have been cut down. There's a backhoe pulling out the boulders that have formed a water feature on a hillside just outside.

2 weeks ago, several planted dividers in the upstairs parking lot were pulled out, the area was paved. That added some badly needed parking spaces. I'm aware that some of the empty bays in this complex have sat empty for months due to lack of parking. And it's summer now; it's very much worse when college students need parking. But I think this is going to end up a stark, sterile complex with structural issues and/or more ugly pipes, since that water feature was draining the upstairs parking lot. Nobody asked me if this meets my approval. Since all I do is work here, why would I have any vote?

At least our customers are still able to get to us. One of the main streets higher up the hill is blocked for most of the summer. And the highway that's about a block from where we live is being re-paved, but that work's farther up the road by now so we don't have the brighter than daylight lights and compactors all night. But the road to where we're moving has been closed for a week and a half, supposed to open tomorrow. Meantime, we have to go way up in the hills, make a big loop just to get there. I guess I could look on the bright side; we're learning more roads around the area, since there's no such thing as a direct route except through the road construction. I don't much mind that part of the alternate routes are gravel roads. But that doesn't make those roads good alternatives in winter.

Here in North Idaho, there are 4 seasons; mud,winter, mud, and road construction. At least this winter, as heavy as it was, didn't go on until "June-uary". It snowed June 14th, last year.

The best that can be said of our first winter in Idaho is that we survived and learned. That was 6+ years ago, so we're pretty well used to that rhythm by now. k D's kids aren't too crazy about this pattern of summers being spent preparing for next winter, but it's necessary. This summer, our preparations for the coming winter are different than we've done before. We hope to move early fall. We have many more mouths to feed than we have before. We have, in cooperation with "D", 2 dozen Rhode Island Red pullets, 3 breeding rabbits, and currently, 5 goats. We thought one of the goats was going to kid Sunday afternoon, but she didn't. From the looks of it, she should have twins.

Not only do the animals have to be provided for, we have to provide different living spaces for ourselves. Last weekend, Ben and I both got stung out by the 31 ft trailer Steve nad I will be sleeping in this coming winter. It has wasp nests in it, so those had to be sprayed before we can work on it. There's some structural stuff that has to be done on both of our travel trailers.

Ben will get the little one. I have been working most mornings, taking things out of it, putting them in my van, going to work, packing empty boxes with that stuff between customers. My goal is to empty the little trailer enough to have it moved before the 7th of August, to eliminate the small storage fees we've been paying on it. But I've got it stuffed with materials for a business I want to go back to, so it's not quite as easy/fast as I'd like. And it's an oven when it's hot, so even if I had the energy, evenings after work is not the time to be in it. Tried it last night for about 3 minutes. We live in such a wonderful place that it's been broken into several times; there's evidence that there have been cats in it; and 3 of the windows have been broken. One has a piece missing, so I'm sure there's stuff that's been wet, is trash. I'm getting to it, little by little.

If this week were a horse.....

If this week were a horse, we should shoot it and start over. Monday was Monday all day long. Had a conversation with a young woman who is lacking in life experience and approaches clients at a gym in a manner that is confrontational and humiliating. I think every difficult customer we have came into the store. Tuesday, husband's truck broke down almost 5 miles from our friend's, so he and our son had to hike... Truck came home on his buddy's trailer. Did a parts run after I got home from work, but there just wasn't time & energy to get the truck going last night. So the 17 yr old got to get up at 4:45AM to take his dad to work. But at least they HAVE work today, the rest of the week, maybe next week, after months of being laid off. And when I went to the gym, I talked with a couple of people who are supervisors. Sweatpants in July, even in North Idaho, are too hot. I need to find some knit shorts at a thrift store. I HATE knit shorts, but.... I am trying to follow the rules, which aren't posted well at all, and she WAS out of bounds. That helps.

Didn't realize I hadn't written anything in here since March. I've been busy.
The social atmosphere in the junky old trailer park where we've lived for 5 1/2 years continues to deteriorate by leaps and bounds. The trailer's falling apart around us, and not worth doing anything about. It's old enough that the it can't be moved, has to be demolished where it stands. It's a liability, not an asset. And we have an opportunity to do some things we've been wanting to do forever, so we're making progress toward moving out.

We've been working with a friend, "D", on her 20 acres, cooperatively doing all sorts of stuff. We've built a greenhouse and stocked it with tomatoes, squash, peppers, carrots, cabbage, herbs... We have a garden, not big enough for the needs of 8 people, but it's a start. She pounded in T-posts, I wove a windbreak fence of about 120 Ponderosa pine saplings. Her place is timbered, hasn't been managed in who knows how long, needs lots and lots of thinning. I walked around with a forester, made sure I have the right idea about what needs to be done. Found a book on tree identification at the library used book store. I didn't grow up here; some trees are the same, others I have to learn.

Being a goat farmer has never been one of my goals, but D bought 5: a wether, and a 2 month old doe kid from one herd; 2 does and a tiny doe kid from another. One of the does in increasingly pregnant. Her name is Trouble, due to her behavior on the way home. As big as she's getting, she'd better twin, and I hope she has twin does. Steve built a shed, and a milking/grooming stand. Need to buy hay for these critters for winter.

We also have 3 rabbits, 2 does, 1 buck. Steve says we need one more doe and another buck. We should be able to start breeding them in August. Guess who gets to do the butchering? Actually, I think that's the easy part; I don't have to kill them.

We have 2 dozen Rhode Island Red pullets. Right now, they're in a big stock tank in the basement, growing exponentially. When they're big enough, they'll share the rabbits' shed. I think they should start laying late September/early October.

The fact that I'm the only one of the 3 adults and a teenager involved in this enterprise who has a permanent job, gets stressful at times. I've gone back to food banks. The good part of that is that we have 7-8 gallon bags of apples cut up in a freezer that will become apple butter later, when we have time. I have about 12 cups of pitted Bing cherries frozen, and 8 quart bags of sliced plums. The aim of the garden, greenhouse, and animals is self-sufficiency. But we're nowhere near that yet. We may achieve parts of it this winter, but other parts will take 3-15 years. But we've started.

We've also found and moved an 8' X 31' park model travel trailer up to D's for us to live in. Price was right, which means there are some issues with plumbing, electricity. The last person who lived in it was apparently not quite all there, ripped out things. So we have to work on it before we can so much as spend the night in it. It does have a sliding glass door, so there's a good big light source. I get tired of living in the dark. The floor's down to carpet padding. Steve's just going to put 3/8" plywood on top of that, use the pad as insulation. Somewhere between living out in the woods, animals, snow... carpet becomes a liability, not a comfort.
The oh-so-fashionable when this trailer was new dark woodwork is going to become MUCH lighter. Where I'm going to carve out the time to paint is a whole 'nother question. It's better than one RV we looked at that had been painted battleship grey, including the ceiling, grey patterned carpet.... except for the horrendous fuschia walls in the shower!

Steve likes the rag rugs I knit last year. Only problem is that they've been walked on and washed so much that any weak spots in the rags have given way, and 2 of them are just falling apart. I have become used to the little luxuries, too, so I will have to make more. I'm sitting here blogging and tearing apart the first rag rug I made, between customers. Polyester stands up to wear better than cotton flannel sheets. What d'you expect of something that's basically plastic? I think I will try knitting rags strips on a knitting loom, see how that goes. With needles, I only knit garter stitch; the looms knit stockinette. If it's not too thick to work with, it will at least be a different texture. Now I need to get out the little Fuller Brush carpet sweeper and clean the lint off the carpet at work.

I have 2 loom knitted strips in seafoam (more blue than green) that was part of D's mom's stash. I'm putting them together into an empire waist sweater or something. I'm making this up as I go. I was working on this between midnight and 2AM this morning, since I was in too much pain to sleep. I made a triangle shaped 'block' to insert between the strips in back, but I'm not entirely pleased with placement. I think it's too wide, too close to the waist. I intend to put the width at the neckline. Right now, the middle of the night or during a slow day at work is almost the only time I have for crocheting or knitting.

Moving always takes more time than I want it to. There's always stuff that you wonder why you have THAT - except that sometimes you get rid of something only to realize 3-6 months later why you had it. But I know there are things that can go to the dump. My current big push is to get a 7' X 15' travel trailer cleaned out so it can be moved, too. We've owned it for 7 years, and it's become a storage unit since we aren't living in it. We did, all 4 of us and 3 cats, the first 6 months in Idaho. Now it's slated to be somewhat remodeled into Ben's 'room'. For the last 12 years, moving has inevitably meant downsizing our space. But since we're finally moving back out to the country, able to participate in a 'farm', some of the things in that trailer will finally be of use.

And work has changed some, too. I trained a new person. She's still not capable of doing what I do, but I've been at this for 2 years. She may not ever want or need to do what I do, for a lot of reasons. It does get kind of funny that I expect to walk in and have to mop up what she didn't understand. We also got a new industrial printer. It's kind of like saying we have a new, small elephant. As such printers go, it's not one of the big ones. But the printer and its attendant, dedicated, computer take up 4' X 8' at the front of the store. I've been learning how to use a program that makes business cards. I like the design part of it, but it's become obvious that we need a higher priced program. I'm still working on learning how to use the printer to its full capabilities.