Luna's Baublebilities

What a crummy vacation.  On one level, it has been very nice to be cooped up in the house together as a family, watching movies, playing games and just generally resting.  On the other hand - the weather has been beautiful and we haven't been able to go out and play in it, the Beorningstead is just sitting there waiting to get water and walls and countertops and appliances, Maxx has had a bad case of cabin fever and even the dog is bored.

Bryan has a terrible case of bronchitis.  He's on his 3rd round of antibiotics since sinus surgery in January and he feels miserable.  We've been married close to 20 years and I've never seen him as sick as he has been this winter. 

I have been mostly healthy since the beginning of the year but at some point after By's surgery, I scorched my face trying to get a big log into the woodstove.  My face was sore for a few days and then started getting better but that little event set off an eczema attack.  I suspect that after my health challenges this fall which included three rounds of antibiotics (Remember swine flu and that horrible ear infection from the 9th circle of hell?) my system, including my skin, has been lacking all of its normal healthy flora and that little scorching opened up some opportunities for a yeast or fungus or something that is causing a lot of aggravation around my eyes and forehead. 

Or it could be just lingering irritation.  I had a little patch of eczema behind my ear for two years after I dyed my hair black for Maxx.  It is February with a woodstove around here -a difficult circumstance for all kinds of skin.  With all of our stress around here, it;s no wonder my body& soul are shouting  "Enough!  Take care of you for a minute!"

I could go the the doctor.  She would give me steriods which would help for a while.  I don't want any steroids.  I don't want any more Big Pharma right now at all. 

I know, I may be being unreasonable.  I tried using a masque of yogurt (Stonyfield farms) and honey this afternoon - which felt divine and really calmed things down a lot.  After my shower, I mixed up a batch of skin cream consisting of shea butter, rose water & grapeseed oil with a few drops each of geranium, lemongrass, tee tree and eucalyptus oil mixed in.  There's some itching going on right now but not nearly as bad as this morning.  The shea butter is so soft and smooth and the essential oils & rose water are all good for sin inflammation and gentle antiseptic action.  I'll probably try another yogurt masque before bed.  Might even sleep with it on.

I'm looking forward to more peaceful skin and a healthier family next week.  In the meantime, I'm working on another glorious silk velvet beaded scarf.  I'll post photos next time.  In the meantime - enjoy another photo of Maxx in the tub.  He's so cute!  And smells good when clean.  :)



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What a bummer of a Halloween we had this year.  We really didn't do anything except let Maxx wear his costume arond all day.   I've decided to quarantine Maxx.  He has asthma so coming down with h1n1 could be particularly dangerous for him.  His doctors insist that he needs the shot as soon as possible but he can't have the nasal spray, which is the only thing that has been available around here. 

Swine flu is rampant here right now - the schools are full of it, Aunt Nichelle had a rough week with it last week and everyone in Gramma and Grampa's household are waiting to see if they will be coming down with it.  Several neighbors have had it and I've heard that at least one local school district has actually shut down for a few days due to over 50% absenteeism.   Until we can get the shot, Maxx and I will just be hanging out at home trying to avoid sick people.   He's bored already.    (Much later. . . . . Aaaaand an update - too late with the quarantine.  I now have a sick little piggy on my hands.)  


On a fun note, I recently scanned some old photos of my grandparents that I thought I would post here.  The first photo is of a class in front of the old Norwood school house on Prospect Street- the photo must have been taken sometime between 1917-1920.  I forgot to double check the back of the photo before giving it back to Meemo - Grandpappy was pretty good about dating his photos.   He's in there - the mischevious looking one with handy ears in the second row.  He used to complain about how his older sister would grab him by the ears when he was naughty and I always felt sorry for him but now that I have my own little boy, I can understand why a big sister would take advantage of such ready steering devices.

The second two are my all time favorite photos of my grandparents - Bea and Bill Merkley posing on the pumpkins.  This photo is from the late 1930's taken on my great Grandfather's farm on Plum brook road, Norfolk, NY.   The farm is no longer there, it was purchased and razed back in the 50's to make room for an expansion to the Bixby cemetery where both of them are now buried.  Isn't she beautiful?  Don't they look like they are having fun!



I won't begrudge anyone who wants to make crafty use of these photos but you may not download and sell the images themselves.

Well, kindergarten has begun.  Maxx has been surprisingly happy about it the last two mornings and has hopped onto the bus without complaint.  (Whew!)

Now I have to get to work in the studio - or rather, in the kitchen, as the stuff in my studio has finally and irrevocably reached critical mass.  No one can do anything in there anymore except maybe package orders for shipping and that is only after much rearrangement of boxes, bins and bags.  I'm so ready to move.  My new studio will be so huge.  There will be a separate area for every type of activity - probably even room for a little table or easel for Maxx to paint at. 

We have started a blog about the house and lifestyle renovations that will be taking place over at the Beorningstead.  We are all excited and impatient to get moved over there.  Soon, we hope.

In the meantime I have to dye and paint a whole bunch of scarves and experiment with the blank tee-shirts I ordered a couple of weeks ago.  I also bought a Yudu machine - they are still on sale at Dharma.  I hope it turns out to be worth the $$$! 

I also hope I have enough Ivory dye to complete an experiment that has been naging my mind for several days.  One of my Etsy customers requested a special order containing seeral different colors of ribbon and cord and mentioned that she would really like to see some cord in a Watermelon Tourmaline color palette.  So what have I been seeing in my sleep for the past 4 days?  You got it - scarves and ribbon and even lengths of velvet dyed up in purple, citrine and gemmy green. I think I've got the formula figured out in my head already But I'm about to find out for sure today.  Wish me luck!

Well, it's officially over. Bry pulled out of the driveway almost 20 minutes ago to head to work, Maxx goes to Kindergarten Thursday and Molly will be starting in on her homeschool schedule Friday.

It is very strange having everyone start back to school before Labor Day. We all feel cheated - especially since Christmas break this year will be a scant week and a half and there is no indication that Spring break will be longer or that regents week will be sooner in June. Somehow the state or the local districts have managed to squeeze another full week into the school year here but there has been no information about a corresponding bump in teacher salaries. Maybe they think that they throw in a bunch of half week extras, the teachers won't be able to do the math and figure out that they are overworking their contracts?

Last night I spent some time contemplating my schedule and how I'm going to get everything done. I'm just not very prodctive on the best of days but I have really got to learn how to be. I hit 40 this winter and I've got to learn how to care for my body a little better. I need it to last at least another 40 or 50 years! Molly's homschool curriculuum this year is her most rigorous yet and while half of it will be done online, I will still have a serious time comitment reviewing History and ELA work. With Maxx in full day kindergarten, I will have more time for exercise, homeschool and studio work and I intend to bring in some serious cash this year to supplement Bryan's income. I'm just not sure how much I can really get done. What I really like to do is slack off most days, exploring nifty things online like this Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project. I mean - how cool is that!? I want to make one.

Plus we have to get the new house ready to move into. We got our commitment leter from the bank three weeks ago (still no estimated closing date) and we have begun work on the Beorningstead, hoping and praying that we can move in before truly cold weather arives. We've already discovered some small unexpected and unbudgeted surprises over there so my studio will have to take up that slack. We are still very excited about it, though - my studio is going to be SO BIG! Expect a new blog about reniovating the Beorningstead soon, moderated by Molly, Bry and me.

Now - I'm off to see about dyeing some new tee shirts & scarves, creating a silk screen design for my new Yudu machine, photographing and uploading new filigree and beads to my Etsy and Art Fire stores, packaging orders from last week, cleaning the house, ordering MB's AP Bio Class, playing with Maxx, getting some exercise . . . O.K. on second thought, just wake me up around dinner time.

I'm behind on my Goblin's Market enamel orders but my studio is (sorta) clean and we've made significant progress on our house. The realtor was by yesterday and is optimistic about the house's potential. We're selling at an unheard of price for the size and condition of the house and he anticipates a lot of interest very soon - so I have to keep cleaning to be ready for visitors!














In fact, as we have been cleaning it, I have been thinking "Oh, yeah. This IS a nice house." Someone with a bit more enthusiasm than I've got who doesn't need a studio with running water or a barn for livestock and recycled lumber could really do something with it. It has great bones.


Yesterday, just as I was starting to get dinner ready, the UPS man stopped by. He had a package full of the most wonderful things. Here are a few of my favorites.



Now on to patina and enamel for my late orders and some of these new beauties. They'll start showing up in my Etsy shop very soon.








P.S. The smiling girl in the frame was my grandmother's best friend in grade school. Doesn't she look like fun and trouble all rolled up into one??



















...

We got a call from the bank this afternoon. They are willing to give us a mortgage on the new house IF and when we sell our old house. Aargh!

We've been scratching our heads for months now trying to figure out how to get this house on the market while we are still living here, hoping that we could be living here and working on the other house at the same time, storing our non-essentials at the new place while we are working on installing plumbing and electrical. We wanted to be doing that this summer so we would be well settled in by wintertime.

I want to be working in my new studio before the Holiday retail season starts - I'm tired of painting scarves on the floor and I know that my scarf productivity can increase at least 5 fold if I am painting in a space with running water, a dedicated dyeing area and sensible shelving.

I've also been fantasizing about the bead shelves we'll put in the new studio a lot. This is what confronts me every time I go upstairs to package orders or design jewelry. I have 85 canisters of these beads. With an average of 5 sections per canister and one or two types of bead stored in each section, I have somewhere between 425 & 450 types of beads. My bead sales and jewelry designing will become much more productive and less time consuming when I get into my new studio, too.

So - now we need a buyer. Fast. Or some other solution.

Any suggestions?

If you know anyone who wants a fixer upper with lots of character in a quiet, friendly neighborhood in Upstate NY, I've got one for sale for $47K!

But I still had to build a fire yesterday. June 1st and it was only 54 degrees in my house. I don't function well below 65 or so, the urge to curl up with a blankie and take a nap is just too great. I hate the fact that the Summer Solstice is upon us every year before school is even out. Other school districts in the country are finishing up (or are finished) right now but we have to go straight through the third week of June. Of course that is all related to the weather. We can't even reliably plant gardens here until after Memorial day, unless we have tons of mulch and plastic coverings to keep baby plants alive, so Upstate NY has a later end of school year date than warmer areas because there was not much need to let the farmers' kids out any earlier than this and those last few weeks of August are so precious for our growing season.

Etsy Bloggers carnival theme this week is to write about our summer plans. - Boy do we have a big summer ahead of us. We are anxiously awaiting a lending decision from the bank about our new place and as soon as we have a go ahead, we have got to start working. We are currently boxing up all non-essentials in our house to be put away in storage so we can start listing this home for sale. Once we close on the new pace, we have got to do a few cosmetic repairs, put in all new wiring and plumbing (because the Amish ripped everything electrical and almost all the plumbing out) remove the outhouse, build an entirely new bathroom in the upstairs attic, replace several windows, wash and paint all the walls, sand and re-finish several floors, install appliances, counters and cupboards in the kitchen, bath and my studio(!!) and maybe we'll be able to move in before the Winter Solstice!

Molly Bryn has been wanting to learn how to blog so I'm planning to have her blog the progress of the new Beorningstead down in Burnett Hollow. I'm so exited to see the progress of our new home as we prepare to move in. I'll let everyone know when we begin that blog - Molly has a great voice and loves to take photos so I'm sure it will be a fun blog to read. I'm also excited about the prospect of boxing up all of our non-essentials for several months. I suspect that there will be lots of things I don't miss tripping over that we will not put back into our new home. As it is, I have at least one huge box of orphan projects that will NOT be coming to my new studio. Anyone want it?

I also hope that we get to do some hiking this summer. Bryan aspires to hike all the high peaks in the Adirondacks and 4 years ago our family climbed Mt. Marcy - the highest peak in NYS. Bryan has climbed it many times and enjoys it but it was really more of a hike than I like and my mother-in-law said that she would probably not attempt such a long hike again, either. I like a quick, easy climb with lots of time to enjoy the scenery on the way up and a pretty view when you get there. We have talked about climbing all the ADK peaks that still have fire towers, I believe that there are 17 of them. Maybe we'll get in one or two of those this summer, if I can get my body back in hiking shape.

The mixed media drawing at the top of this post (which I cannot seem to convince GIMP or Blogger to resize for me - aaaargh!) was inspired by a hike up Mt Van Hovenberg when Molly was about 7. It is titled "There Was an Orange Salamander on the Trail." We have since discovered that our salamander was actually a red eft, which has since become one of my favorite teeny crawling things. What you cannot see in this composite scan is that the clouds, water and contour lines have a lot of sparkley gel-pen accent work and there is a teeneency little eft on the trail. The scanner just seems to read the sparkley as grey and the eft is invisible. Oh well.

Things seem to be moving forward on our new house. We will be hearing about a lending decision within a few days and I've got my fingers crossed. It is a bit iffy because our debt-to-income ratio will look terrible until we sell this house. I certainly hope it sells soon, and to someone who will be a good fit with this little community. We have some of the best neighbors in the world right here in Ft. Jackson and I will miss being so close to them. I'm only going to be 5 miles away, though, so I'll certainly still be able to get to Georgia's annual book sale to benefit our tiny local library.





This spring I am really enjoying our flowers and I will miss them. Our lilacs have been a bit shabby - most people here just treat lilacs like a wild shrub and let them grow but we had a big work party here last fall and a friend of mine cut several of my lilacs back. The ones that Rita worked on look fabulous this year - full of rich, heavy blossoms, no dead wood and no leftover dry stalks from last year.










We have at least 5 varieties of lilac on the property - a white blossoming variety, two pale lavender blossomers - one single and one double blossomed and two darker shades of blossoms, one of which is a double blossom. I'm really enjoing the dark dark single variety right outside my kitchen window this year. It is one of the trees that was cut back and the blossoms are perfect - and they smell great.






The peonies are going to blossom this year. They have only blossomed once for us - the first year, one or two pitiful little blossoms, but again, Rita knows her flowers and cut away a lot of junk growing around them so the have gotten more light this spring and promise to bloom.



















We also have a persistent population of feral poppies. They are self seeding and pop up all over the place - wherever their seed heads sere shaken the previous year. I love their fuzzy stems and buds and the full blown flower is incredible. I will be saving some seed heads to shake over at the new place.




Day lilies will be next - happily, they were ready to be thinned out this spring so I have already planted some of them at the new house, as well as some early lilac suckers. I'll still be able to enjoy some of these flowers next spring!










......

Our Sunday started out fairly nicely this week. It was a District Conference Meeting so Bryan didn't have to go in for any 8:30 meetings or stay late for Youth meetings or even to process tithing. It was just 10-Noon - in and out - DONE. Oh - how I'm growing to love those Sundays!

So we got a nap in the afternoon and then went to play with our friends, the McKnights for a few hours. Molly elected to stay near home and play with Tabors instead, since they have more teenage boys in their house or something. Bry, Maxx and I stayed a bit too late at McKnights and came home around 11:30 to find Molly Bryn trapped with her fingers crushed in a window. The blasted 200 year double sash windows get stuck sometimes. I had been trying for days to close this particular window to no avail (had even had the thought nagging at me that I should get Bryan to close it - so much for listening to the Spirit, eh?) but it closed up for her all right - right on two of her fingers. Bryan had to saw the sash in half in order to extricate her and we were in the ER until 1:30 this morning getting the fingers checked out. Bry and I were both afraid that the fingers would have to come off - they were alomost completely flat when they came out of the window.

But happily, no bones were broken and the doc thinks that they will heal O.K. - though they will most likely turn a lurid shade of purple before the day is out. The worst part is that she was stuck there for at least half an hour, screaming her head off. She broke the window and the screen with the firplace poker to try and summon help from our neighbors (who live less than 15 yards from that window - I have bolts of silk that I could stretch from that window to their window and at least halfway back again) but either no one heard her or no one bothered to check out the reason for a girl screaming repeatedly for help at 11:00 at night. That's pretty reassuring, isn't it?

So today, I'm giving thanks that she wasn't badly cut when she busted out the window and that she gets to keep her fingers. I also hope to get a nap and to start training Ziggy to "get the phone." Poor Ziggy was almost as distraught as she was when we got home - he hates to see his kids cry.

I awoke this morning to Maxx shaking my arm and exclaiming about a mousie caught in the vacuum cleaner. I thought he was pretending to have a mouse caught so I went along with his game until I dioscovered - lo and behold - there really was a small thing moving around in the vacuum! Not a mousie - a mole.




What a crazy way to start the day.

First, I have no idea how the boy got downstairs before me. I have excellent sneaky-child radar and am usually awake before he even gets to the hallway, much less all the way downstairs.

Second, aside from the fact that we live in a crumbling old farm house, I have no idea why we have so many moles suddenly. I caught one in a snappy mouse trap a week ago. Earlier this week, one got caught in a mice cube (a more humane mousie catcher). And now this one - the vacuum cleaner mole. Maybe it is an invasion of sorts. A super cute & soft, speedy, sightless invasion.

Third, I have no idea what would have induced this particular mole to crawl into my vacuum cleaner, all the way up the tube and fall into the dust bin at the bottom. But there he was, all dusty and dirty and longing for freedom. He'll get it soon enough. Right now he's in the trash bin but soon he will also go for a walk in the woods.

We are learning a lot about rodents around here lately. Moles are vey cute in a strange sort of way. they move MUCH more quickly than you would expect and can jump quite high - they are almost impossible to photograph. They like dog food and a drink of water after they have been caught in the vacuum for several hours. They almost never stop moving while in captivity and their fur really is just about the softest thing on the planet. (I don't recommend petting a mole bare handed unless he has calmed down enough to be touched. Moles have a poison in their saliva that paralyses earthworms - it can't feel good in your finger.)

BTW - if you are freaked out by small furry, speedy things, remember that I live in the East's largest bat sanctuary. Small furry things WITHOUT wings are awesome.

In most modern homes, one would expect a few simple things of the plumbing. One would expect that clean water would come into the house through the pipes, powered by the pump. One would expect that water to then move to places like the kitchen or bathroom sink, tub, toilet or washer on demand. One then expects the used water to exit the house either to the septic or gray water drainage as appropriate.

These are things that most homeowners simply take for granted. The physics and mechanics of plumbing are not very complicated and our family all of the necessary equipment in place for these processes to happen smoothly. But in our home, this rarely happens, despite all of Bryan's expertise and hard work at trying to coerce the system to function properly.

So, after living here for 8 years, am convinced that our home is cursed. It is a very intricate, specific and powerful curse. Here is what I have been able to determine about the 'rules' of the curse:

-The basic rule seems to be that most, but not all, of the components of the system may function properly at any given time.

-All components of the system may function properly after a major repair or event, but for no longer than 45 days.

-The longer it has been since a disruption and subsequent repair, the more expensive and difficult the next repair must be.

-All family vacations or long weekends must be accompanied by a major break down in the system requiring either a repair, a contamination event or dry well. Specifically, sumer vacation must include the well running dry at least once. Winter break must include frozen pipes.

-Luna must not be allowed to use the Claw Foot bathtub more than two times a year. This is assured by low water levels during the warm months and arctic temperatures in the bathroom during the cold months.

-At least 40% of all plumbing events must happen during times of major stress and/or require late night repairs - like the recent MLK day fiasco when the washer pipes burst just as Bry was leaving to chaperone a youth activity.

-60% of all repairs must involve neighbors or Home Teachers helping by climbing down into the well, staying up with Bry until 2:00 am, or taking apart some part of the septic system - as in the 2nd half of the MLK day fiasco when Ken had to take our toilet apart to remove a truly horrible, nasty clog while Bry was reparing the washer pipes.

-30% of all failures must be completely inexplicable - like the trap on the kitchen sink suddenly & mysteriously coming completely unscrewed just when the sink is draining.

So - I need to find a way to break this curse since moving does not sem to be an option at present. Anyone know andy powerful witches?