Tuesday, July 15, 2008

- About a horse



If there is one thing that kept nagging me in the back of my mind and telling me that getting land was the way to go, that one thing was this horse. His name is Keystone, and I love him a bit too much.

We bought Keystone in October of 2006. He is big and bold and wonderful. He is a great grandson of Native Dancer, the greatest gray Thoroughbred that ever lived. Nothing would make me happier than getting up in the morning and walking out to see Keystone in his pasture, right by our house. I know, don't we all wish to see big beautiful animals first thing in the morning :) Well, I know tons of people who don't, but it is a dream of mine.

Buying land and actually having some farmland would mean that we could bring Keystone to live with us. It would also mean full responsibility for his care, including his breakfast, which he likes to take before 8 am.

Have I mentioned before that I am not a morning person? Good, glad we understand each other. I still wish that I could get up and visit with Keystone. Apparently not bad enough that I am actually willing to risk the comfort of my bed in the early morning.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

- Names are important


The quest for the nameless hobby continued for a while. I tried to define it because I wanted to tell people about it. When I got into scrapbooking, it was great to have a name for what I did. It felt good to be a part of something, a movement with a name and a face and lots of online support. Maybe if I found a name for what I wanted to do, I could find me some friends that were in the same boat.

I tried some things on for size. Part-time domestic goddess. Nah. Domestic renaissance. Ummm…no. Back to basics just in the afternoons. Sure, whatever. Finally I settled on being the person with the no name hobby that was mostly a hodgepodge of old domestic arts mixed in with some good environmental responsibility.

Maybe the reason why I couldn’t come up with a name is because what I was trying to get into was not a hobby but more of a lifestyle change. All I wanted to do was come home to a place that was filled with meaning as opposed to knickknacks and expensive furniture. I wanted to live a full and rewarding family life without all the trappings of modern technology. I wanted us to raise food with our hands, cook it in our home, and eat it together. I just wanted all of us to come home.

Now, I do believe in free choice. I didn’t think that it was fair for me to drag my husband and kids into this adventure kicking and screaming if it was not something that they wanted to do. I decided that I would change the way I did things, and let them join in if they felt like it. No pressure (what a concept, after being raised by the mother of all pressuring mothers). Show them a good thing and let them come and get it if they are interested. There had to be something in this life change of mine that interested them. And, even if there wasn’t, they would eat better and I didn’t think I would get complaints about that.

I first envisioned this new life as a sort of social experiment. You can’t blame me, I have been doing experiments for a living most of my life. I would chronicle the whole thing in a blog. People would be able to follow it. It would be a grand adventure on a large scale. It would…wait a minute…it would be just like those books I had been into lately. Barbara Kingsolver’s year of eating locally. A.J. Jacobs year of living biblically. Was I nothing more than a copycat? Was I waiting for a date to start this new life so I could do it for a whole exact year? Was I going to create that kind of pressure for myself? I was so disappointed in my own competitive nature. That was so NOT what this whole thing was about. It was about being happy and fulfilled and relaxed. I had never written anything before, save for research papers. Was I asking for rejection letters and re-writes? Was I crazy?

Back to the drawing board I went.

It finally hit me that I had to write about it because I was afraid that I would forget the things I did and what worked or didn’t work. This indicated to me that there was a specific need for a journal. I also had to write about it to make it real. It felt a little more real just now as I finished typing that sentence. A private journal would not create any pressure. I would just write when I felt like it. I could also organize it (or not organize it) any way I wanted, which was a big plus.

As far as making it a year, or putting any other time constraints on it, I scrapped that idea. As a very loose starting date, I chose my birthday, on September 25, 2007. Some things were already started around that date, some were just in the form of an idea or a stack of library books. The wheels were in motion, and I had secured some participation from family members. My husband was on board with the plan to plant a medium size organic garden in the backyard in the spring. We signed up together for a rainwater collection workshop in October. The kids were warned that we may be going to the Farmer’s Market more often. Lots of fruits and vegetables started to pepper the table.

Even my mother was alerted of the change. She was in her own private hell at the time, coping with the effects of chemotherapy, but she got on board. She liked the fresh veggies and all the cooking I was doing. She even started knitting a scarf with some natural sheep yarn that we got from a local fiber farm. Our time to come home, to come to our home-turned-farm had started. No ending date had been set, and maybe one would never become necessary.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

- I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career


I just love that line from the movie Say Anything. That’s me. I don’t like the pressure of selling. I am not much of a buyer. And I don’t think that I would ever be happy if I was forced to process stuff for a living. How do I make a living, you ask? I teach chemistry. It’s a great job, and it makes me happy. Not everyday, but on average it does make me happy. I wasn’t looking for a new career (it took a while to figure this out). I was looking for a part-time happiness source. Which had to loosely resemble being trapped at home after an ice storm, minus the cold. Still with me?

Knowing that I wasn’t looking for a new career took the best part of the summer, and took a huge weight off my shoulders. Or it could have been the anti-depressants kicking in, we’ll never know. Around that time, my mom’s health took a turn for the better. She was able to eat, and her mood improved. Or mine did. Again, no way to know. Searching for a hobby was a much easier thing. It didn’t involve quitting, moving, or buying land. I am pretty sure that my husband was quite relieved. If he only knew. So, what would the perfect hobby be?

I searched the Internet again. You would be surprised to see how many craft sites and message boards there are out there. I was familiar with my little scrapbooking corner of the net, but there is just so many other crafts. And there is cooking. And gardening. Organic gardening sounded good. There just wasn’t a hobby that jived with being trapped at home plus gardening plus going light on the environment (I am not sure when I decided to add that to the happiness equation, but you might as well dream big). So, like any other confused individual out there would do, I made a couple of lists.

Here is the gist of what my lists (which evolved slowly and painfully over time) had to offer.

The things I thought I wanted:

Spending time with husband and kids

Being home

Cooking

Organizing

Making cheese and butter

Baking

Knitting

Quilting

Organic gardening

Keeping chickens (just for the eggs)

Taking pictures

Scrapbooking

Sewing

Horsemanship

Decorating/remodeling

Canning and freezing

Making compost

Collecting rainwater

Living frugally, but meaningfully

Relaxing

Writing

The things I knew I didn’t want:

Waking up early

Quitting my job

Moving

Cleaning

Anything involving heavy machinery

Having more responsibility

Spending more

Stressing out

Traveling


Something was starting to take shape here. It was hard to tell what exactly that shape was.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

- Finding stuff


When other people talk about their quests for happiness, it always sounds so easy. Search and you shall find. The skies parted and God talked to me. There was a fork on the road, and I took it. Sure. Well, it’s not always that way. In some ways, last year I was at a place where I had found happiness. I had to do some digging to find the source of my unhappiness. What was it? Suburban life? Would I be happier on 40 acres and having some mules? I hear you have to wake up early to feed the mules, so scrap that. I am also not that big on manual labor. Oh, and I am allergic to mosquitoes. And I freckle. Easily. So there, as good as the farm sounds (and I do love the farming idea), I shall remain a visitor. Albeit, a daily visitor, because our horse is boarded at a farm nearby. A farm where somebody else wakes up early to feed him. Bless her heart.

It was hard to give up the farm idea, but it was just so unpractical. Then I started to think about crafting. I had some success designing scrapbook pages. Some had been picked up for magazines, I had done some freelance work. Maybe I could be a full time scrapbook designer. Yikes, that sounds like a lot of work for little money. Maybe I could quilt. I spent hours on the Internet looking for quilting information. Did I mention I don’t sew? Maybe I could cook. Cakes, perhaps? Oh, no, I have no experience making cakes, but I am a decent baker. How hard could it be?

One day I was driving home and started to think (I always do my best thinking while driving) about what being happy really meant to me. If I wanted to describe a perfectly happy moment, what would that be? The happiest time that came to mind was the aftermath of an ice storm that we had 4 years ago. I know. Crazy. Power was knocked out. We had no heat, no phone, nothing. And a big branch crashed on our roof and almost landed on top of our bed. Yet, I was so blissfully happy. We cooked (we do have a gas stove and gas water heater). We ate. We played games, we sat around. I took lots of pictures. We all slept on the floor in the living room with the dogs and the cat, trying to stay warm. It was fun. It was fun to be home and do domestic things. It was fun to be together without anyone running away to check their e-mail. Hmmm. Maybe that was just a fluke. Certainly there must have had a happier moment. When the kids were born? Nope, too stressful. Our honeymoon? It was great, but I missed Victoria so much. Christmas? When we spent them at home. Vacations? No, not really. Well, I did enjoy that one time when we rented a cabin in Bryson City and just kind of spent some time hanging out, drinking hot chocolate, and watching the little creek that ran behind it.

Could this really mean that I was happiest when trapped at home? And, if so, what was next? What did this finding mean? I had no earthly idea.

Monday, July 7, 2008

- It all started with a wake-up call


It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but the early months of 2007 were colder than usual, and the winter dragged on for a bit. It was April and it was still cold and dreary. I was tired and sluggish and generally just trying to cope with stuff. And then my mom called to say she had gone to the doctor and that she had bladder cancer.

Talk about a rude awakening. I had lived all my life up to that point cradled in the certainly that I was going to live forever. All my ancestors had. My mom’s relatives are all so healthy that the running joke is that you have to kill them to get rid of them. My dad’s brother is 83 and still lives by himself and kids around like a teenager. Nobody in our family had ever had cancer. I was home safe. The present moment may be a bit bleak, with the kids and work and financial worries, but I had my whole life ahead of me, and disease was not in my future. Up until now.

Turns out that several family members had had cancer. Funny nobody ever thought of mentioning it to me. My uncle had lung cancer. My mom’s uncle had stomach cancer. My dad had a colon cancer scare just two years ago and is now watching an enlarged prostate. And that’s not all. Diabetes, high blood pressure, and all sorts of mental disorders run in my mother’s family. My dad lost his mother to stroke, as well as his older brother. Great. Way to cheer a person up. I may not be living forever after all.

It hit me hard. Even harder when my mother came to stay with us after her surgery to have her chemo here. So many medical issues to deal with. So many mistakes were made. I got mad. And then I got depressed.

I was lucky enough to get medication for my depression. A gift from God, no doubt, but caring for my mother was still no picnic. I read lots of books. I searched. I thought I wanted to quit my job and move to the Lesser Antilles (sounded like a good idea at the time...and I really love the name of that place, even though I have no idea where on earth it is located). Or maybe quit my job and move to a farm in Appalachia (OK, this was right after I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle). Or quit my job and go into real estate. Or holistic medicine. Or quilting. I was lost.

Finally, after months of searching and thinking I finally figured out that I didn’t want to quit my job. Great. So, what did I want? The idea of farming tugged at my heart. I was generally unhappy (although no longer sad) most of the time. I shied away from homework and hid from my kids. I called Papa John’s for pizza so I could putz away in the computer. It seemed like a perfect time for God to send me a sign. Except he didn’t. Great. Now what?