Four years ago

Four years ago (at 4pm as I write this) we were sitting in the heat waiting for the trailer break down guy to get our house dug out of the mud. He had been 2 hours late, he was sent instead of his father (who we had paid), and was now drunk. He had not followed the normal procedure to break down a house trailer (probably due to his lateness and the fact that his dad was usually there to oversee things). Our house sat unstable and a little twisted. The damage was pretty significant, broken walls and cabinets.  But he was convincing when he said they'd have it out in the morning when the puller came back.

They did not, instead they jacked it up as high as they could on the puller truck, put blocks at the back to hold up the back, leaving the middle unsupported (anyone who has ever towed anything knows how bad that is! ) and surprise surprise,  what happened?? They broke our house. In an instant we found ourselves homeless. It is what changed everything in our lives, even our outlook on the world. It all changed in a blink of an eye. The following days and weeks, were awful, including also the loss of our income. It was a very dark time.

For some reason it is hitting me hard this year. Much harder than the years past. It was not just a house, it was a home, it was a dream, our daughter was born there. To many people it was 'just' a house trailer,  of no real significant importance, that was the hardest part, feeling like so few cared. Of course there was a lot of amazing kindness shown to us and very kind friends and random people. But for whatever reason, knowing some put so little value on our HOME was dehumanizing in some way. I certainly can't wish it on anyone, I hate hearing people have lost their home, it is too near my heart. It is something you really can't imagine until it happens.

Wahoo! We can cook outside!

I can't express how liberating it is to finally have a good solution for outside cooking. Being off grid (or even for those without a/c), cooking inside is brutal and makes the house a level of hot and humid that nature can not create on its own. So mostly I only cook breakfast and we eat light things and sandwiches.

The last few summers we have tried the propane camping stove and just an open fire (in various forms). All ended up being very susceptible to the wind, even a light breeze could make water not boil. We thought of a propane grill with a side burner,  but a grill is a poor oven and the side burner wasn't rated to get water boiling (one of the hardest things to do!) Plus, propane costs money and money is usually pretty short for us.  The wood was free, coming from our own trees, but it would take so much wood to get the water boiling and boiling long enough.

So our solution started with the kids. This early spring they started making 'camps' with random things we had in the yard, most would be considered trash, but it was so neat to watch them create and see what they came up with.  Paul became obsessed with campfires and cooking outside. In time he found and old pot that had rusted through a few spots on the bottom. He built a fire and cooked hotdogs! Just this week Chip needed to boil some oak bark, a process of several hours, there was no way we would heat the house up, so he started looking around and he ended up elaborating on Paul's camp cooker. Now we can cook outside efficiently using the unsplitable logs. Chip cuts them real thin and then chops them into little blocks.

The bottom pot has slits for air, then a grill grate, and then the pot for cooking. 

The heat has begun

Summer is a challenge!  So hot, itchy, sweaty, just miserable. I Don't know how people can enjoy it, maybe it is the difference between people who can get relief with a/c and those who can't for whatever reason (us being off grid, man it would be a LOT of solar panels to have even a little a/c!)  I probably wouldn't mind summer as much if it involved less sweat and itching. I do love the life that is around and the green plants, but it is literally an hour by hour trudge to fall. Thankfully it is really only 3 months.

The other part is the mosquitoes,  those little pests are out with extra thick this year. We got lucky last year, not this year. The whining of them can start to drive one crazy, not to mention the itching.  I really don't like chemicals, but I am on the verge of looking to see how you'd kill ten acres of mosquitoes!

I am mostly writting this to get the summer whine out of the way and hopefully resign myself to get through it. Complaining does not help at all. It just makes a downward spiral on everyone's mood.  Hopefully we can get a water meter, that will help immensely.   Thanks to those who have helped with donations toward that!

On the walk to get the mail

Our mail is about half a mile away, along with our trash can.  We usually to up daily and just abkut always find something along the way, a new plant or flower, some kind of animal (yesterday it was a skunk! ). Here is today's find, a box turtle.

Help us get Water!

http://gofundme.com/vpry9s

That is the go fund me link for our fundraiser to get a water meter. Thanks for looking.

The kids nicknames

Blame it on facebook and their 'on this day' thing! I have found it mostly interesting,  some times very sad, to see things from the past, to see the seasons change through the years, both literally and figuratively.  So I am going to attempt to post a blog or status everyday, one thing I have noticed is how much the kids grow. You blink and they are five years older.  Also, I know I have mentioned it, but in many ways time stopped, life stopped, when our home was destroyed.  It has been just survival since then. Sometimes it is more settled, especially in the last year, but I still have to remind myself that Dolores is not 1.5 and Paul 4, and it is getting harder now that Charlotte is the age it all happened, the whole world crumbling apart. As Pa says many times in the Little House series, alls well that ends well,  we are certainly in a better place because of all of that, but it still happened, it is still a wound healing.

Anyhow, here is some fun that has been waiting to be posted for awhile, how tbe kids nicknames came to be! :)

It started with Paul calling himself 'Paul the dog' (which is also a very annoying game he made up!) He started this shortly after we moved here, around Christmas of 2012, he would go nuts like the dogs did when Chip got home. The dogs were outside mostly, but a big 5 year old jumping around like a dog in a little rv was a lot! But it is Paul's only nickname so it has become a fond memory :) he is still occasionally 'Paul the Dog'.

Then Dolores had to be included in the craziness of daddy coming home.  She started calling herself 'Dolores the cat' she has since added 'the dog, the plane, the styrofoam plane, landing on a jet plane (which comes from John Denvers' Leaving on a Jetplane). These she has added them all herself.

CharlotteBelle has been 'Baby Belle' (like the cheese the babybel brand cheese) and after our friend who is named Belle. Chip added 'Baby Belle Cheese'. She has aquired and few addions because of her love of pasta sauce and dipping thi gs into various sauces or dips. Her offical full nickname is CharlotteBelle Marie Baby Belle Cheese Sauce Awesome Sauce Dipper. Dolores wants to add Ice Cream, but Charlotte does not like ice cream so it isn't happening!

I am not a nickname person, just want to call people their names, but the kids love it and of course Chip does. So they get names from me and nicknames for daddy and each other.

Faces of CharlotteBelle

Here are a few of her at 2 months/9 weeks.

CharlotteBelle is four weeks old!

(Written December 15)

Her birth story will be posted soon. I can't believe she has been here for four weeks! It doesn't seem possible.

So far she has gained over 2 pounds and that was at our 3 week post partum check so not sure what she is up to now.

A few pictures.

39 weeks

*written 3 months ago, kept forgetting to post*

It has been a long time since I posted.  I am going to attempt an update but not sure I can do the last 6 months justice!

Last I posted was about our driven point well, we worked and worked at it but it stopped moving, we hit some rock we couldn't get through.  So the pipe still sits there and we haul water.  It wouldn't be such an issue if we had a car.

To the car. It died at the end of May.  I won't go into the horrid details of those first weeks, it was ugly and really taxing and a true trial in survival.  Over the next month, Chip got a scooter and we found a driver who drives Amish who was willing to drive me to town too, he also let's me fill all the jugs and buckets I can from his well, truly a God send. 

We made it through the summer, our first with no electricity, and it wasn't as awful as we thought and didn't change our minds on power :).  Life without electricity is pretty nice and peaceful.     Frankly we miss Internet and long for it more than ever, but not electricity.Currently I just have a basic prepaid flip phone with mobile web.  Think 2005.  Add in having awful signal here and it is a challenge. I have my old smartphone which I update every other week with rides into town.  That is how I wrote this.  I am hoping it works so I can share pictures and such. 

Now for baby talk! I am technically 'due' November 9th, my birthday, but Paul was born at 43 weeks and Dolores at just under 42, I am feeling it'll be around the 18th, time will tell! (CharlotteBelle was born November 17th) This is also a surprise and I haven't had a good hunch either way, some days I think boy others girl. We shall see.  The kids, especially Paul, are so excited, tons of questions about the baby and how big it will be, where it will sleep.   Dolores can't wait until I can carry her more and for me to have a lap again! I am sometimes ready, others not.  I want to know what life with this new little one will be like, nervous about how I will get all my work done and keep up, but of course excited too.

I think the best thing about now is that life actually seems to finally be getting settled.  If you go and read the post http://where-is-julie.blogspot.com/2011/09/everything-changes-in-blink-of-eye.html you will be reminded of where this all started.  It still seems like yesterday.  Two and a half years, and still some people don't get it. Time stopped that day.  I realized a few weeks ago, while talking to the kids about the coming baby, that even in my mind they were still just a little over 4 and 1.5. It was that moment I realized all over again the gravity of what we have been through.  We aren't just losers, we really have had a really rough time.  In the end, we are in a better place now, even though it is hard and people think we are nuts or are disappointed in our choices.  It is where we want to be, well minus a well :) but in time that will come.

Picture is me at 39 weeks when this post was written.

Paul's lego dinos

Paul's lego dinosaurs

the journey has officially begun!

the story is long and for another post, I just wanted to get back to posting and see how this works with the phone :)  we are living now in the beautiful Ozarks in a peaceful place.  I can't wait to share our journey and adventures :)

Beginning of a new era

Through the awful events of the summer, some good has some, many acts of kindness have been shown and shared with us, it is overwhelming at times. Also, a great deal of personal growth, which might not make sense, but yes, I grew up a lot!

In dealing with all this, and the mental struggles, I realized ,the major problem of the last 2 decades of my life has centered around depression. I know some people knew this, but I didn't. I thought it was just 'a rough patch', or 'I'm just tired'. It was really the anger that gave it away for me. I could not deny that I was angry. Then I realized that I was angry, a lot and had been for a long time. In time I saw all the other signs that have been screaming at me for years, but had pushed them aside.

So today I had a doctor's appointment. Medicine prescribed (and picked up, I can't believe I let myself go this long for $20 a month! all this time I kept saying we couldn't afford it since I don't have medical insurance!). I am very hopeful. I know nothing is foolproof, and yes bad days will happen, but the undercurrent in my life will not be sadness.

It is hard to admit, and that is some of why I am writing this. Some many people have tried to get me to see, and I was blind. So you were right, I am glad I finally see.

reminder

I hate when I use my abs in a way that makes me feel it in my scar. It makes me sad. I don't like that reminder.

I also don't like having to come up with a title for a post that really doesn't need a title! :)

playing detective

I have a site meter thing and it's always fascinating to me. Sometimes disturbing to see what people will use as search words to find this. I just wish it told me WHO, I can figure some out, but not all. Every week when I get the email, I spend a few minutes playing detective! I still haven't figured out Mountain View, California! It is a fun few minutes.

Everything changes in the blink of an eye

Looking back at the last three months, it boggles my mind to even do that. I think of all the silly things I worried about then. Life was suppose to finally be more settled and not tumultuous, the stress of living someplace you aren't wanted was going to be gone, finally being settled. How that can all change, literally in the blink of an eye. I remember my last night in our home, I didn't know it was going to be my last night, I simply thought it was the last night in the town I claim as home, a place I now have no desire to go at all, too many painful memories. If only I had known, that what I had feared would happen a hundred times before (though I thought it would be a fire, Chip thought it would be wind/tornado), our home being gone, would be realized.

There is no preparing for that moment, none at all. A phone call at 6:07 am (I was suppose to be there, but had overslept since I had been up all night for two nights prior packing). I don't know that I will ever forget that call, that time. Of course, I did not know that that call meant the end of our home, he didn't even tell me, I found out when I got there, well before I got there, driving around the corner looking over the field to see my house almost bent all in half, twisted in a way you never thought possible. I didn't even notice the front being folded and pushed through my kitchen floor, until someone motioned to the tongue of the trailer. I can't describe the feeling of realizing that your home is no more, realizing that you have no place to sleep, no place for your kids to play. Then, knowing that I had to go back to our tent and tell Chip, who was sleeping with the kids. I have no desire to live those following weeks again, ever. Losing a home is not just a monetary nightmare, or a logistically issue, it goes to all parts, mind, heart, soul........the soul especially.

Then two weeks later, Chip got fired, and not because he did anything wrong or broke a rule, but simply because some people really are evil. It was salt on a gaping wound. Chip lost most of his friends and his name was tarnished just to cover someones lies. I am still amazed and scared of the fact that there can actually be people who have that much vileness in them, that much anger and hatred.

One of the hardest things is people not giving credit to what this involves, acting as if it's no big deal, it was only a trailer. I lost my faith for awhile, and my compassion. As hard as it is to admit, losing my compassion was more alarming. My faith came back, through prayer, especially the prayers of others. Compassion too, but it wanes. On days when I have had to continually remind people of how hard it is to wake up to a destroyed home (then have your income taken away), my compassion is gone, on others, I try to remember how much worse it could have been, offering my misery for them. Mostly I'm just tired of being kicked to the ground. Tired of being pushed aside by those who should care but don't.

Three months later, life is hard, real hard. It's pretty miserable actually. There's very little to look forward too. Winter is looming. It's going to be cold and long. Plus Christmas, it breaks my heart to even think about that. Paul is old enough to KNOW what goes with that, but not old enough to understand why it won't happen this year.

Today was a rough one. Nothing huge happened, just a bunch of small stuff. Sad news from a friend about her mom was especially troubling. Normally at night, at least I have the feeling of 'we made it through another day', so it's not a sad ending, but today, it's this lonely, empty feeling. I don't know if it was just the events of the day, the foreshadowing of a conversation this morning, or just a melancholy mood. The foreshadowing conversation is scary, though it could be good in the end. I am just ready to be settled, ready to not have a huge mountain to climb, ready to have a home, not just a place that holds a kitchen and a bathroom. Wish I could find the fix for that.

Walking

Dolores trying out her walking skills :)

Dolores is ONE!

Okay, it was on the 6th, but it took me awhile to get the pictures all downloaded. :)  We had a little family thing at the state park here. 

I can’t believe she is one!  It has gone so fast.  As for stats for her, she’s crawling, all over the place, and has taken a few random steps, but not anything regular.  LOVES our teeth and hates having socks on her feet!  She has decided that she’s too busy during the day to stop and nurse, so is nursing mostly all night long, makes for a tired mom, very tired.  I think I am more tired than when she was new :).  Today I am trying to just make her pause and sit with me to nurse, even if for a little bit, maybe after a few days of this she’ll go back to nursing mostly during the day and sleeping at night like she used to!  Dolores loves to do whatever her brother is doing, he’s not so keen on that all the time.

Here are some pictures from her birthday.  I especially love the perplexed look on her face when she first is touching the cupcake trying to figure it out. :)

Finger painting

Today Paul found the finger paints so we tried them out.  Paul had a blast, Dolores did not at all like them.  Screamed!  I tried to get handprints of both of them, but she was not happy about it.  I think I did get enough of one.  Have a few pictures to share from the painting and also from the last few days.

Paul’s tower of blocks.  He was so, so proud!  He got the people on there and asked me to take a picture.

 

Paul wanted me to take his picture after taking them of the tower.  

Dolores tonight, almost one year old!  Just 7 days, I can’t believe it.  I finally found a way to get rid of red eye! 

 

Her smiling!  Yes, she’s holding an empty can of daddy’s special camo beer! :)

Coming after the camera, but so cute!

 

Paul wanted in on the picture taking, with his own empty can, they love those things!

 

Below is the pictures of the paintings that Paul did.  The first one is Paul in the green and Dolores in the red/orange, her feet in the middle.  She was so not happy about this!  I didn’t push it more to get good prints.  I would have taken some of Paul after painting, but he took his clothes, so no way to edit that!

Trying to make the best

We have been sick for like 2 weeks.  I just finally started to feel better and the kids got mostly unsnotty and now I’m feeling sick again.  NOT happy, at all.  We don’t go anywhere, so have no idea how in the world I could be sick again.  Hoping it’s nothing at all and goes away with a good nights sleep!

Yesterday was a rough day.  The kids and I are all short of sleep for various things, and so I sent us to bed at 9, which is crazy, crazy early for us!  We were asleep by 10, only for me to be woken again by the dang dog.  Between those dogs and Dolores I am up way more than I’d like to be a night.  Add in one of the dogs having horrible bowel issues that took place three times yesterday and then three times again at night.  I finally gave up cleaning and today banished her outside and scrubbed the crates, carpet and wall. 

So today I decided to take the advice that I so often tell people and also myself, that of today is a new day.  For being as short on sleep as I ended up being, I did well today and didn’t even start to feel tired until just about an hour ago!  It’s been so nice to be keeping up with the basic household chores, it really makes a difference in mood to only have a days worth of work to do, not a weeks.  Makes the small stuff that I’d like to get done easier to get done, and also not as big a deal if it doesn’t because what HAS to be done is done.

Today ended up being a good day.  It was sunny and finally not windy!  The kids played outside most of the day, and I sat there with them for a large part of it, it was nice to not have something pressing that I needed to get done (again, keeping up with the basics helped there!).  Now I’m ready for bed!  Got a few hours before then.

A return

Goodness, it's been longer than I wanted. The day after my last post we went to the zoo. Paul had a blast. Dolores had fun too, but she's probably too young to really understand a zoo, just had fun smiling at people and playing :). I have a few pictures, but not on here yet to post. The next day the cold that won't die, fell upon us, or me mostly, the next day Paul too. It just won't go away! Sunday I lost my voice, or at least a usable voice. I think I may be getting it back today. Paul's still a little drippy, and thankful (thank you breastfeeding!) Dolores only got a few sniffles! Chip has had it for a few days too. I am read to be normal again!

Okay, blogger just told me I can't upload pictures, so I guess I wouldn't be sharing the zoo pictures even if I had them all ready!