Time to get busy

(Writing on Friday and Saturday nights.)

Time to get busy, because something sad that I hate to admit has happened. The next year or so is going to be very busy, and very hard to deal with. Things are not going well with us as a couple, and despite best efforts, we're drifting apart. It's sad to think of homesteading alone, but unless things turn around with us, it's going to happen. I will be homesteading, alone. I thought it might happen a couple of years ago, but we moved to the mountain and things seemed to get better.

This past summer has proven otherwise, and things are just not working out between us. We spend more time apart than we do together, and there have been comments made on his part that indicate he's really not happy here. When your spouse says things like, "I know you don't really want to full-on homestead," despite that about all you talk about is plans for the future ON the homestead, and he makes other comments about finding a place "more in-town, with more conveniences," you kind of get the less-than-broad hint that things are not heading in a direction you necessarily want to go. It's not been said outright yet, but we've essentially agreed to go our separate ways. It'll be a bit easier once he's working again, because we'll see less of each other, with working different shifts. I'm sure some of you have noticed that I've been trying so hard to be cheerful these last several months, but I have to finally admit that I've run out of cheerful and have hit a wall in that respect.

With that said, things will continue to get done around here, fixed up as needed to make it a bit more liveable and cleaner and neater, but in the long run, I'm going to have to go it alone, probably somewhere else. So getting internet up here is going to be a big must as soon as he's back to work, to help make some extra money to sock away towards buying a place of my own. It means a lower-cost property, so I can afford it on my own. It probably means really hardscrabble living for a while yet after I get a place. My options are to buy something with a house on it (more expensive and I won't necessarily be able to have what I want easily), or buy bare land and put up a bare-bones cabin and go from there. At least with the latter option, I'd be off-grid from the start, which would leave more money for fixing it up the way I'd like. (Though there is a place for sale for $20,000 about 90 minutes from work, with a shell of a house on it already ... the stud walls are all up, the outer sheathing is on, and the metal roof is on, but that's it. No windows, no doors, and it's likely going to have to have the sheathing redone before windows and doors can go in.)

I did get some stuff done around here this week. Quentin did just about nothing, being busy being depressed that his rehire date isn't here yet. The weather has been semi-cooperative, in that while it's rained a lot, it's held off till after dark settles in each night this past week to do anything, and quit by early morning. Only once have the fall temperatures fallen low enough that I had to be really careful heading to work, and even then it was only that the deck was slippery. I slipped a bit stepping off the deck onto the stairs, but managed to catch myself and not get hurt. Thank goodness, because my bum left ankle from June just recently finally healed up all the way. It's still a bit swollen on the outside from tissue damage that I don't think will ever go away, but I've got full movement of the ankle again, thank goodness.

So anyhow, evenings, I got home from work just in time to drop off work gear (my heavy apron that's kind of like a tarp in material and my lunchbag), kick off work boots and put my sneakers on, grab my work gloves and a five-gallon bucket, and head outside for an hour or so. That trash pile by the easement and I are having at it, and it's slowly going down, because I want the trash here gone. G-O-N-E, gone. I'm tired of looking at it and tired of waiting for my other half to decide to do anything about it ("We need a garden cart or wheelbarrow to make any kind of dent in that mess. A five-gallon bucket ain't gonna do enough fast enough to make it worthwhile." AKA "I don't want to do it so I'm going to come up with a lame excuse that sounds valid so I don't have to do anything about it."). So I just did a few buckets a night and there's a bigger dent in the pile than there was earlier this year.

You kind of can't see it because there's just still so much junk there that it doesn't show unless you know what you're looking for. I got some weatherstripping from Home Depot a while back and had asked Quentin to put it on the front door frame to help keep out the drafts. I ended up doing that this week too, along with a lot of spray foam along the bottom, so sadly, I think my draft dodger is going to be a permanent addition to the place, because the foam kind of sealed it in place in between the entry door and the screen door. But at least there aren't any drafts around the door, now!

And I am sorry for being bitter up there. I hate to admit it, but I am kind of bitter over this past year with Quentin. There's been a number of excuses, many on my part ("He's depressed," etc.) to cover up the issues that have crept in on us and our relationship, but there's been a number on his part, too. Mostly involving one of two things. One, I give him a list of things I'd like to see done, and hear later that he didn't do anything because "It would have taken me all day to do some of that stuff." (Never mind that that was the point, to keep him busy so he wouldn't have time to be depressed.) Two, and his favorite, "It's too [insert weather condition of your choice here] outside to get out and do anything."

Kid you not, 4 PM, and he's going, "It's getting dark so we need to get inside and all." FOUR O'CLOCK, and at that point in the summer the sun wasn't setting until EIGHT at the earliest. But it's "getting dark," so obviously, we both have to quit doing a darn thing. Okay, third thing actually that kept things from getting done around here, in that he was too lazy to get off his butt and do anything, including find a job. (And I just didn't want the screaming arguements that ensued whenever I'd try to get some oomph into him.) There's another laundry list of excuses from him for not doing that, including "I don't want to work in a gas station because it'd be like being in a cage all the time." Never mind that the place hasn't got bar one on the building.

So yeah, I'm angry and upset and bitter and hurt and a whole host of other very negative things right now. But I'm not going to let it get me down. Things I want to see done will get done if I have to do them myself. If I don't know how, I'll have to learn pretty darned quick. All in all, it's been a pretty craptastic week barring one little thing.

That being I had Friday off work. USDA scheduled our plant for a no-kill day, so everybody, barring a couple of departments like the cooked products, got a day off. I need the money but the day off was nice, too. I went and got the groceries we need for the week, and while in Harrison, I made a stop at a place I'd looked at in passing a number of times and never stopped. At one point on the main drag, there's a little knock-together cabin sitting in a parking lot, close to the road. It's tiny but just the right size for one or two people.

Front porch that runs the full width of the front of the cabin, a few easy-to-get-up-and-down stairs to the porch, lots of nice windows that tilt in for easy cleaning, interior stud walls to make a cute little kitchen and full bath (big enough for a tub if you want one! and I could get a small wood-burning cookstove in the kitchen), and stairs to a sleeping loft above the kitchen and bath. Two big windows in the one end of the living room/dining room area, and another single one on the front porch side, give loads of light. I could easily sleep up in the loft for a while, and long before my aging joints said "Enough of that stair-climbing crap!" I could have a bedroom or two added on to the back of the place.

There's a window in the kitchen and in the loft, too. I'd want one more in the bathroom, but that's me. I like LOTS of light. I'd probably  have to have a bigger cabin, though, so I could have a spare bedroom for an office/library. I do love my books, after all, and I'd like to have my printed friends out of the bondage of boxes and onto proper shelves. For that matter, if it was bigger, I could sleep downstairs and have the loft for a library/office/reading nook, yes? The building is just stud walls with a finished exterior, and I need to find more info on the company online Sunday, but it looks good and they do other buildings, too. If they can do a barn like I want, that will help out tremendously down the road, too. I can't build anything worth a darn, as far as framing and the like, so I'd have to pay someone to do it anyhow, and if I can find what I like in a prebuilt or easily built like that, I'm all for it. Only problem is, the builder has no website, or any flyers at the place, just a phone number, and so I have no clue how much the place would cost, or if he'd do it as a rent-to-own building.

On the other hand, I also saw one in Berryville Saturday from Derksen I like about as well that's a display model. 16' x 40', double lofted, and they call it the Deluxe Lofted Barn Cabin. It's got a nice wraparound-the-corner porch in front, two huge lofts that could be used for some serious storage (all they'd need would be pull-down ladders), the nook right inside the front door would make a dandy little kitchen, with plenty of room yet downstairs for a sleeping area, a small bathroom and a living/dining/office area. All it would need would be an extra door in the back, and one more window in the back loft for more light and air up there. Heck, build a set of stairs to the back one and it could be a sleeping loft, for that matter. Derksen allows a free upgrade to a metal roof from a shingle roof, which would mean putting on downspouts and eaves pretty quickly, along with barrels for rain catchment. The one we looked at today (we had to go that way anyhow, and he wanted to stop and look - I'm glad I said ok) was nice and comfy, despite not being finished, and it's not even 50F outside today. So as long as it didn't get bitter cold, it could easily be dropped on a piece of land in late winter and even lived in easily while being fixed up.

Of course, that would lead to a need for a generator for power until a solar system could be set up, and a woodstove pretty much right off for heat and some cooking, but that's doable. Also a cheap corner shower from Home Depot to stick in the bathroom corner so I could still have my solar shower bag for cleanup, though I'd have to drill a hole in the floor for the drain and run pipe to a French drain outside for the greywater runoff from that. But it's doable, highly doable, and immediately off-grid, so the money that currently goes out for electric could instead be put to fixing up the place. Even the TV could go, as far as I'm concerned - I can watch TV on the internet or on DVDs, and a digital antenna isn't that expensive, nor is NetFlix. There's another $80 a month not going out for a utility that I get no current use out of around here. (Yeah, he hogs the remote, too. Sometimes I wonder why I even DVR anything, since I so rarely get to actually WATCH any of it right now.) The other really good thing is that Derksen buildings can be bought on payments over a three-year period of rent-to-own. If I could afford to buy this particular one cash on the barrelhead, it would be about $17,000. If I bought it on payments, it would add about $11,000 to the overall price, but payments would likely be a lot easier to come up with than the whole shebang right away. (The cabin in particular I am talking about would be about $775 a month to buy on rent-to-own, which is steep, but not horribly bad for owning it outright in three years with no credit check and no deposit.)

With the hope that soon, there will be interwebs here, I've been working on designing the website for the homestead a bit on paper. I kind of know what types of pages I want to have on the site, but I need to do a lot more design work as far as categories in various parts of it, especially for the recommended pages section and the actual storefront. Thankfully, with the webstore part, I can take PayPal and people can buy stuff with their credit cards that way if they like, rather than me having to pay a fortune I don't have (and won't have for a long time, if ever) for a credit card processing company to work with me to take payments. PayPal is safe and much easier for me to deal with.

As for needlework, the afghan for the baby has been started, and I hope like heck it turns out. I've changed my mind on it, and instead of the Baby Feet squares, I'm going to do an all-over pattern called linen stitch instead, in stripes. Dark blue for the garter stitch border (which for you non-knitters, just means that all stitches on both right and wrong side rows are knitted, so it's all bumpy), and the center will be the linen stitch pattern, done in stripes of the colors I have for the blanket. So it will be pretty in a non-distracting way, warm for cold evenings, and comfy.

I did get the crocheted sweater done for when little Elizabeth Marie is bigger, but now it's time for the 3 months sweater set to get done, and it will go fast, because I'm cheating on that one, sort of. I'm using the rather-popular-with-knitters 5-hour set, which pretty much is about how fast the sweater goes, then another couple of hours for hat and booties, and it's done. I can't find a soaker (diaper cover) pattern I like enough, so I'm skipping that and just plugging away on the rest of it. My socks are coming along, in that one is done, and the other is started, just not much, haha. The Feather and Fan afghan is currently back-burnered, as is the assembly of the granny square afghan, because I really need to get the baby's stuff done and my new socks. I'm running out of woolies for my feetsies to stay warm in at work, as I keep wearing holes in my current ones, so I need to get a good deal of sock-knitting done over the winter.

And here's current pictures of the boys relaxing in the warm-ish house. (Boy, I'll be glad when there's a propane heater in here, but the weather's being fairly cooperative lately, so it's reasonably comfy.)

Here's Bouncer ...

sitting on the back of the loveseat. He likes to curl up there for naps, and with it being so squishy and overstuffed, he can't fall off too easily. If he does, it's usually into the seat!

And Smudge ...

sitting on the floor about where the propane heater will go once it's here.

So there's a lot of changes in store along the next year or so. I hope they'll be good ones, where things can move forward. We shall see. With all that said, it's time for the weekly dose of free kindle goodies. Have fun folks - I'm trying desperately and it's difficult, but I'm still managing to smile and not cry. I gotta scoot, though, so I can have this ready to post tomorrow (Sunday), because I'm in the middle of a pretty good book (I'm reading Anne McCaffrey's Brainship series and I'm almost done with "The City Who Fought") and I want to finish it up before bed. So, till next week, here's this week's dose of freebies!

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THIS WEEK'S FREE KINDLE BOOKS