Tag Archives: clearing the clutter

Uncharacteristic Weather: A Long Dry Spell

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My friend Cidnie over at Our Life with Ceol Mor recently did a really smart thing: she announced to her readers that she was taking a break from posting for a certain period of time. When she announced it, my first thought was ‘what a smart idea’. Unfortunately my thoughts stopped at that moment. Had I followed those thoughts to their logical conclusion I would have realized that by announcing her planned hiatus, she would avoid the guilt over what  I call “failure to post”. When you have a blog that you love, posting things becomes a natural part of your life, so I have discovered. And in spite of the fact that most people do not comment, our stats tell us people do actually at least look at our pages, so I feel a certain illogical responsibility to that audience. What to do when there is really very little to say?

I notice that some bloggers post something every day. Frankly, I can never be that blogger. I cannot imagine a time when I would have something interesting to share every day.  I don’t need to be in people’s consciousness that much.  Most days are lived in ‘the beige’ of life: they are neither high nor low, but form the background and tie all the other days together. Time drifts by. What’s so great about that? No, I fear that posting every day at this point is just not going to be my style. So if there are long periods of time between posts, know that we are living in the beige just then and have nothing of interest to report in terms of progress. No one wants to read about how many hours I spent laying on the couch doing nothing or working out to my cardio boxing game. Here’s a brief wrap up of what we’ve accomplished toward the plan so far this year:20130212_1

We’ve bought a truck. True, we’ve added a vehicle, and, against common wisdom,  this has given us a profound sense of relief because we deperately need a truck with the property we live on. Now we can do dump runs, take furniture to Goodwill, get mulch and bark for the yard, and all the good things only trucks do. Then there is the issue of transporting things like kayaks and Puddler, our dinghy. We got this truck for only 1500$ so it didn’t set us back much.

Mike has made it his goal in life to clear the yard of unused items that, while hidden from sight, still must be dealt with should we ever dig ourselves out of here. Old wheelbarrow? Gone. Useless garden hose reel? Vamoose. Lawn vac? (yeah, I know.) Finished. Next to go are my old cement mixer (yes, I owned my own), a big pile of treated wood from Andrew’s old tree house, a lot of firewood, and a big stack of cement roofing tiles leftover from a garden edging project. You begin to see why a truck is a necessity.

I have cleaned up the work area behind the greenhouse to enable a leaner operation, offer a good place for storing garden tools all in one place (yeah, like that’s going to happen once gardening season begins), and allow Mike to build a structure for things that need cover, like the lawn mower. I am willing to share that area  because the days of my starting a hundred kinds of seeds in one season and acting like I own a nursery are over for now.

Just as people have to get boats ready to go, homeowners have to get their home ready to either sell or rent, and we’ve been doing that. Mike has created a great workshop area in the garage. There is room for it now that we’ve dumped so much stuff at Goodwill. Plus room for the car. Who knew? He’s replaced a toilet and I notice that he has bought a supply of molding to finish off a couple of areas. We have a door standing by to replace another door that is hideous. Anyone who complains that boats are a lot of work has never owned a home. Their cries fall on deaf ears around here.

Anyone notice how often I’ve typed the word ‘Mike’? That’s right. He is basically driving this train right now. I am the caboose, being pulled along in the same direction, and thankful for it. My focus is on my work and my health. It’s enough for me presently. I am back to working out, which feels great, (and many thanks to Nintendo for creating the Wii because I hate going to a gym). I am back on my diet to take off the pounds of holiday excess and fight my British genetic love of all things carbohydrate. I am infusing energy into my work by planning to teach some classes. All to the good. In my line of business, sitting back and coasting isn’t really an option if you give a crap about work quality. And I do.

Moonrise remains on the market and we have continued to do little projects that don’t warrant their own post, such as bringing home the canvas cover for the wheel and giving it a good wash, and cleaning the outside of her. Boats in the Puget Sound area look just awful in the winter. They have a tendency to grow a green algae everywhere. We can’t let that stand. Mike is refinishing the teak cockpit table, as the canvas doesn’t quite cover the end of it and it was badly weathered. We’ve had some interest in Moonrise but it is now a waiting game. I am of the mind that we need to set a date by which, if she is still ours, we decide to keep her and move on. I grow weary and discouraged over having my heart broken about other boats. Who knows? Maybe it wouldn’t be that uncomfortable sailing the Pacific on Moonrise. Who am I kidding? It would be terrible. But I would probably go anyhow.

So we exist in a slow moving wave just now, a time of introspection and waiting as we have just passed the mid-winter mark. The snowdrops are blooming, I’ve cut back the old leaves of the hellebores to unveil their blossoms. The chickens are busy keeping weeds at bay and generally running amok. Some shrubs appear to believe we’ll have an early spring around here. We’ve had a blessedly easy winter this year but we aren’t out of the woods yet. I’ll do a garden post soon, as it begins to look interesting out there. Meanwhile, we surf the wave slowly but surely.

Skippy standing guard over the winter garden.

Skippy standing guard over the winter garden.

 

Make Lemonade

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Sometimes life throws a few lemons our way and we have to decide how to respond. This was what happened last week when the wind kicked up, making the tall fir tree next to the greenhouse shimmy and shake a bit, releasing a large branch.

Look closely at the third panel from the right. Yep. It’s gone.

That’s right. A big branch took out one of the roof panels of safety glass. Tiny squares of glass flew everywhere, landing even inside of my gardening gloves. This is why I do not spend any time in the greenhouse when the wind is up.

Why, you might ask, did we build the greenhouse underneath a giant fir tree? Did we just fall off the turnip truck yesterday? No, we did not. There is no place on our property that is not encumbered by giant trees. Living with this kind of danger has its own kind of beauty. And craziness.

This greenhouse stood for over 5 years with nary a branch falling through fair window. Until last year. We lost the pane next to this one last year during the really big winter storm that also caused us to lose our large picture window in the kitchen while Mike was standing too close for comfort. And they say sailing is dangerous. This whole ‘branch falling’ scenario is why I have plans to be on the boat this winter when the wind starts blowing. I learned my lesson last year. And we’ve decided any glass that gets shattered in the greenhouse will be replaced by polycarbonate or some other clear, strong material that laughs at falling branches.

So to clean up the mess, everything had to come out of the greenhouse because the glass was simply everywhere. You would not believe how much stuff a person can store in an 8 x 10 foot greenhouse. Mike started pulling it all out and I realized this was the perfect opportunity to go through and get rid of a bunch of stuff I don’t need anymore.

What did I tell you? And that’s not all of it.

So yesterday and today, that’s what I’ve been doing while I ruminate on the two boats we’ve seen lately and come to terms with my feelings and thoughts about this whole plan of ours. It’s been time well spent in a number of ways, not the least of which is that I now have a very tidy greenhouse and two big loads of gardening ‘stuff’ that can go on the free section of Craigslist.

I like to come in here during the winter, pet my succulents, and pretend I’m someplace warm. I have a very good imagination.

Time to put the succulents to bed for the winter.

Now you know why I bother overwintering my succulents. This is Epiphyllum oxypetalum.

 

 

 

Regrets? I’ve Had a Few.

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Cement leaf, cast from our Big Leaf Maple tree.

I think in a previous post I may have made some kind of grandiose statement to the effect that there is nothing I regret having thrown out in our attempts to downsize and restructure the way we live. I believe I may have implied, or perhaps directly stated, that I’m  actually happy I have rid myself of all the many truckloads of stuff that now languishes somewhere in the thrift shops of the world.  I would like to amend that statement now. That statement is not precisely true. In fact, just today I realized I had thrown out something that  I really wish I had kept because, as I feared, I now want to use it. Isn’t there some kind of saying to the effect that the moment one gets rid of something, one needs it?

What is this very important item, the intrigued reader wonders? Why, it’s a completely unopened aqua blue mosquito netting, made to drape over a bed. It’s not a high quality one, but I bought it because I found it for less than 3$, loved the color, and I figured someday I would either use it, or would give it as a gift. What it represents to me now is yards and yards of gauzy fabric in a perfect shade of aquamarine.

The problem is that I craft. It’s not a constant problem,  I don’t always make things, but occasionally I get a wild hair and begin working with different materials in a creative sort of way. In the past I have worked with fabric, photography,  mosaic, and cement. I’ve made some pretty nifty things with those materials, and always I have had to spend some time gearing up by learning about the materials and what they will do together, etc. In other words, I play with them; sometimes lots of them. I have to learn what the materials will do before I can make them do what I want.

Simple mosaic on top of a garden wall.

And that’s the space I’m in now, and that’s why I save so many things. I never know what I might do with them. I never know when the urge is going to strike, the artist’s muse can strike at any time, unpredictably. I like to be prepared. And it’s hard to be prepared when you don’t exactly know what you will need!

Just before the storm, it struck me that when we begin living on a boat and cruising around, I really have nothing to offer others that’s worth much in terms of selling or bartering for goods or services. I mean, Mike can fix anything electrical or computer oriented. He’s also pretty good at engines. He’s a guy’s guy when it comes to those kinds of things. In his career he started out in electronics and ended up writing computer applications. He’s all over that stuff.

I, on the other hand, am a psychotherapist.  I can tell you right now that I am NOT going to be offering those services to other cruisers. Those days will be gone by the time we get to cast off. Cruisers who need therapy will be referred to the local village shaman. So I need something else to offer. What do I actually enjoy doing that might be worth something to others? And is there something I could even sell through this website that might make a little money for the cruising kitty?  And I came up with a nice little idea that involves making certain things with wool felt.

Dale Chihuly glass, photo taken at the Bridge of Glass in Tacoma, then played with on the computer.

So now I’m fully invested in the development of this idea and  I’m excited to play with all the pretty colors of wool roving. I want to use the wool roving with different fabrics to see what works for this idea, so I NEED that mosquito netting now and it is long gone. Frankly, I was just about fit to be tied when I remembered that not only would it be perfect for the experimenting I want to do, but it is even the right color and there would have been plenty of it, giving me a good supply to work with if my idea bore fruit. My knickers are really in a twist about it. It’s not that I cannot find more, it’s that I already had it once and it feels like a considerable waste of resources to go out and find/buy more.

Now when I face getting rid of more stuff I’m going to do so  with a little fear and loathing because I would much rather use things I already own than try to go find them again. This is the same argument that allows me to keep things that I currently have no use for, which completely flies in the face of the ‘purging’ mentality. And the ‘if you ‘ve had it for more than one year and haven’t used it…’ rule does not apply here. Frankly, that rule just never applies to craft supplies. But who knows what will become material for crafting? You can never tell.  I had that mosquito netting for at least 2 years.  Come to think of it, there’s a sarong I wish I had kept, and a couple of silk scarves as well.

Rats. It’s going to take me some time to untwist my knickers over this.

Cement birdbath, the product of many hours of play.