A Long Day of Commitments Elsewhere

Today was a long day. By long, I mean it's one in the morning, and I'm just new getting to a place where I can catch you up a little bit.

We had a huge (by our standards) rain storm here two nights ago. It was pouring for over an hour. In spite of the lightning and thunder's magnificent attempt to entertain us and frighten Dog, it exposed a weakness in the trailer. The pvc poster I made and had on our wall in Ketchikan is  duct-taped to the outside of the front window. It's been like that since just north of Casper, Wyoming, the unofficial capital of the most inconveniently politically conservative and unfortunately unlucky state I've had the privilege to travel through.

Anyway, that leaked pretty well. I'd say we would bring in about a gallon an hour. We wedged towels in there and everything. Hardcore. But Little Girl slept through it all.

The overall state of things... shelter is good. It's not insulated well, and our swamp cooler has a difficult time keeping up, but cooler weather is just around the corner. Electricity has only failed when power in town fails, which has only happened twice since we moved here.

Water is tricky and the system is constantly getting refined. Currently, we have a small camping porta-potty for the toilet. Those things are fantastic, by the way, for those of you who road trip with families. For water storage, we have two big 7 gallon cube containers with taps outside on my makeshift table. We also have another seven gallon jerry-can shaped container as a back up. The trailer itself has plumbing, but it's leaky, dirty, and basically needs to be replaced, so this is the temporary solution. We have a few big jugs we fill with water for use inside, and I just hooked up a couple of 42 cup coffee pots, one by the kitchen sink, the other on the roof above the shower. I'm hoping that it'll let us do dishes and take hot or at least warm showers without the hassle of boiling water on the stove.

Since all of that is gray water, we just let it fall into the yard into the garden. We're using the fancy, multi-purpose soaps from the organic food store. I'm planing to build a filter system for it, basically a ditch leading to the garden that has gravel that gets smaller until it's fine sand.

Anyway, that's where we are with the trailer at this point. The yard is slowly coming asking. Hetero Life Mate has been working on a path system through the yard. She connected our makeshift pallet deck to the old brick path Mom built years and years ago by framing a dirt path with wood she found elsewhere in the yard. She cleaned up that old brick path, and made another path from the back porch of the Big House to what's left of the old gate on the back wall of the old basketball court/future patio.

Lots done, but lots to do yet. Every day is an adventure. Stay tuned. This was extra long tonight!

The Big Sky Series: The Update

It's been a while since I've posted. Life takes some turns. I find myself in Belgrade, Montana, quietly waiting for a young lady to run to the bank and get a title squared away. Last night, my family sold our only car, Chandler, a 1996 Geo Prism, and this morning, I'm adopting her replacement, a 1983 Chevy Suburban named Road Kill. We've found that having a sedan is difficult when there is two adults, a toddler, a newborn, a dog, and any amount of groceries or stuff to haul. Sacrificing fuel economy to be able to put everything in one car and still have room to pick up other people could be a game changer.

Yes, I've said it. A newborn. For those who don't follow me on Facebook, our little Fidget was born March 19, joining our growing family in our new place to call home, Bozeman, Montana. We decided to move here from Ketchikan, not in response to disappointment with all of the grandeur that is Alaska, but to be closer to The Boy, my son and My Queen's step son, who lives with his mom in Denver. The community here has been beautiful, and we found ourselves hitting the ground here running with overwhelming support from friends and family, new and old. K and J, friends of friends, let us stay on their futon before we found a place. The Unitarian Universalist church here has been wonderfully supportive and intellectually challenging. Gas is a dollar cheaper per gallon. Our biggest hurdle to overcome as a family continues to be financial, as my income after child support for The Boy and rent continues to allow only a hundred dollars for food, fuel, and various other expenses.

Still, My Queen and I feel optimistic that we're going to come out on top, knowing before we left Alaska that this was going to be the most difficult year of our lives. We're confident that, in a few years, we'll be able to tell stories about how hard life was and how we got through it together, laughing about the times we had only a few boxes of store brand macaroni and cheese to last us until payday, three days away.

Life is fickle, but it is also beautiful and to be cherished. We're going to be okay. We have help, donations of furniture, money, clothes and baby gear, all thrown our way, and while we'd love to pay it all back, we're accepting that, when we can, we'll only be able to pay it forward, and we'll do that. Life may be fickle, but it's so damn good to hear The Boy laughing when I get home from work that it's all worth it. Don't let the bastards grind you down.