Still Dreaming

So, we are back from our quick trip out to the property. To recap, the travel trailer had to be moved because we thought that the GPS coordinates we were given by the seller were incorrect, and they were. David and crew went out there last weekend and, after our friends did us a huge favor by doing a survey for us gratis, moved the trailer to a new spot. We suspected the problem with the coordinates for a while. We had downloaded some topography maps and pinpointed where we thought our property lines were and it turns out that we were very close. I couldn't wait to see where David decided to place the trailer, so with a little coaxing, I talked David into making another trip out there for Christmas. It was beautiful and a holiday I won't soon forget. I affectionately called this our Cactus Christmas and you can see why:



We decorated the yucca plant closest to the trailer and even though the Christmas lights ran the batteries down within 2 hours, it was worth it.


We spent Christmas day clearing the brush and dead cactus, palmettos and sotols from the section in front of the trailer. David had the big pick axe and we each had a good pair of gloves. It was a beautiful mild and sunny day. After we finished clearing the area, we drove to the top of the mountain to call the girls and other family to wish them Merry Christmas. On the way down, we gathered a small load of stones and fossils and a bunch of dead yucca stalks. The plan is to gather lots more stones and fossils, make a rock patio in the cleared area in front of the trailer and build a ramada using the yucca stalks for the roof. Several of the yucca stalks are more than 10 feet in length. We want to add a sleeping porch off the back, too. The long term plan is to build a rock cabin and move the trailer to another piece on the property. Our goal is to recycle and reuse as much material as possible and gather natural materials from the land, too. (Before we left town to go to the property, we noticed that someone had dumped some chain link fence posts near the dumpster in the alley behind our house. We planned to gather them, but unfortunately, the trash truck came before we had the chance.)


It may not look like much has changed, but here are photos of the area before we cleared the brush:





and after we cleared the brush from a different angle:



We left a few yuccas, sotols and sage bushes. That's steak, potatoes, onions, corn on the cob and biscuits cooking in the dutch oven in the photo... Christmas dinner. We were in bed by 9:00 and up early the next morning to see this spectacular sunrise:



David had to be at work by 5:00, so we left at noon. I wish we could have stayed the weekend and finished the rock patio and started the ramada, but it was very nice to take a hot shower and get a good night's sleep at home. Next trip: gather more rocks and yucca stalks, remove the tires and wheels from the trailer and lower it/level it, hook up the propane and test the refrigerator (the stove top and oven work) and start the stone patio.

When we were cleaning out the trailer after we first received it (thank you, Gary, for your generous and kind gift), I found a bottle of Nuwati Herbals Cloudwalking Tea. The label says "...eliminates those 'should have, got to, need to, forgot to' thoughts that keep you awake." I thought about throwing it away since I didn't know how old the jar is but instead, put it aside. During this last trip, I decided to brew a little. I didn't have an infuser so I heated up some water and let the herbs float around in the hot water for a few minutes and added a dash of sugar. I have to admit that the herbs smelled a little funny, but I decided to try it anyway. After steeping for a few minutes, it smelled pretty good and tasted ok, too. And it worked! I slept well. Since returning home to electricity and internet access, I looked up the website - http://www.nuwatiherbals.com/ - and read about some of their other products. Interesting. I will be using the Cloudwalking Tea in the future.

Merry Christmas!

It's very quiet around here! The girls and number one grandson couldn't come for Christmas because Tessa couldn't get the time off, but we will be celebrating soon. They are coming after the new year but before school starts next semester. David is at work and I am just biding time until he gets out. The Ramcharger is loaded to make the trip down south to our remote property. Since it's just the two of us, we decided to celebrate Christmas there tomorrow. We are leaving tonight as soon as David gets off work. We are planning to take the "short" route which cuts about 30 minutes off the trip. I hope we can find our place as we haven't driven that route after dark before. The GPS is loaded with fresh batteries and we are ready to try.

I have been researching off-grid power again lately. Until we get something together, we have a mid-grade UPS. Right now, it's fully charged. We are taking that with us so we can run a lamp or two and maybe some twinkle lights on Christmas night. We picked up a few pieces of cookware, flatware and utensils and a cast iron dutch oven over the weekend, so I believe that now, we will have everything we need or want in the RV. We can just take our food, fuel and firewood and a few personal belongings when we go down there, which will make the trip much easier. We had a survey done and it turns out that we did not have the trailer parked on our property. We suspected that was true as we looked at aerial maps of the area, but now we have survey pins placed at the corners and the trailer has been moved to it's permanent spot. We can start building the water catchment and other structures that we have wanted to work on since we first moved the trailer out there. The front corner of the trailer was dinged in the move. Hopefully, it didn't do too much damage. Things are finally moving forward.

Here is a photo of the view from the top of our property. If you look closely, you can see the RV near the wall of the creek that runs through the property. Of course, the creek is dry right now.

A fossil that looks like a skull? Maybe...

I'm a Slug

I don't think I've mentioned that I don't have cable here, or even a mast tv antenna. Even if I did have the mast, it wouldn't catch a signal as there are no local tv stations. I think the closest station is about 170 miles away in Odessa. But I do have a bright shiny plasma tv hanging on the wall. It's a remnant of the old life. I use an HDMI cable to hook my laptop to it and watch TV or movies on http://www.surfthechannel.com/ when I need a TV fix. I have a netflix membership for keeping a steady stream of movies coming. They always seem to sit on the coffee table for 2 or 3 weeks before I get around to watching them.

But today, I've not watched a movie or any tv. I have, however, been sitting in front of my computer all day searching for information about solar panels, inverters, charge controllers and deep cycle batteries, wind generators and sustainable living. It seems I never tire of reading about this stuff. My neighbor just got a new wind generator and every once in a while, I can hear the whir of the fan blades as they spin. It's pretty windy here today. I imagine that he gets much satisfaction as he looks out his tinted sliding glass door at that beautiful piece of machinery.

So, I must get up and away from this computer. There are dirty dishes in my kitchen sink and a couple of loads of laundry to be done. Plus, I have dog hair tumbleweeds drifting by. The beauty of living in a small house is that it only takes about an hour and a half to clean.

Missing Mom

Today, I miss Mother. I miss her so much that I dissolved into tears a few times today. It has not been long since I've thought of her. I think of her all the time. But it has been a while since I've cried for her. It was the kind of crying that makes me exhausted. The ugly cry. Thank goodness I was alone. Well, except once but at least it was after 5 and the office was closed and the door was locked. So only my boss, who is also my friend, saw me. Now I'm not one to cry in front of my boss. In fact, I'm not one to cry in front of anyone. But sometimes grief hits me square between the eyes, catches me off guard, doesn't give me time to catch my breath and think another thought before the tears come.

It all started, the trail of tears, while I was listening to Christmas music on XM Radio at work. Nat King Cole with his beautiful liquid soothing perfect voice came on, singing The Christmas Song. You know, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your nose." Had I simply thought of this song and not heard it, I never would have expected to cry. But in a split second, the late great Nat's voice carried me back to last Christmas with Mom, which turned out to be THE last Christmas with Mom, and then I sped backward to thoughts of my childhood. And that was all I could take. I ran to the bathroom, with the tears already coming quickly. Thank goodness it was almost time to go to lunch. I went home, ate some tomato soup with crackers, and then felt compelled to find and watch the video tribute (posted on my blog on March 17) that Jamie made for Mom's funeral. Needless to say, watching that video threw me over the edge. I went there willingly. It was a sad day. How lucky am I that I had so much love for my Mom that I have the privilege of being sad?

If you're into Christmas and the accompanying music, here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=213PQuV83-o is a nice video on youtube of one of my alltime favorite Christmas songs. It's a very nice arrangement of that sweet Vince Guaraldi song on the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack called Christmas Time is Here. (More about the soundtrack here and also a link to hear Guaraldi's arrangement http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6545283 .) This song reminds me of when my girls were little and that innocent time of expectation and Santa. I remember one year, when we were living in San Antonio and the girls were 8, 7 and 5, I hired a "real" Santa with real white hair and a real white beard and a real big belly to show up at the house with a sack of toys in tow. He had to hide his early 90s model forest green Ford Ranger down the street. Tessa, who was 5 at the time, remembers this as the Christmas that I wouldn't let her play with her presents. In reality, Santa gave her a small electronic keyboard with all the bells and whistles and I was amazed at what this little toy could do. Maybe I was a little selfish with this toy. Sorry Tessa. Interestingly, I found out that "real" Santa was a member of a radical militia group out in Bandera. The group had started with good intentions but had ventured into some illegal activity. I worked with him for more than a year and had no idea.

Speaking of the girls and Darien, too, they are not coming for Christmas because Tessa has to work on Christmas Eve and Kathleen is feeling pressure to spend Christmas with Darien's other grandparents. I remember those days, too, so I've given her my blessing to stay. We can't go there because David has to work on Christmas Eve and then the day after Christmas. That's ok. We will get together in January before everyone has to go back to college. Jamie is starting an internship on January 20. I am very proud of her. She will be interning where they traditionally only accept graduate students.

Have I mentioned that it's been nice to post on my blog again? Even if no one ever reads it, I feel as if I'm back in the land of the living. One last little thing, but this little thing has changed my life for the better. I started reading Sarah Ban Breathnach's Simple Abundance a few days after we moved here in August, on the 21st to be exact. I was terrified of what we had just done - moved to a new place, a very small town, with no jobs lined up and no confirmed place to live and very little money. (In fact, we rented a small place sight unseen from a perfect stranger who lives in another part of Texas and when we arrived, the old tenant had not yet moved out. But that's another story and it obviously worked out as I am sitting in the living room of this cute little place as I write.) Back during my trip to Nashville to help Tessa move back to Texas, we shopped at a big used bookstore . I found Simple Abundance, a book I had been wanting for a long time, used... for 10 cents. Wow! And the accompanying gratitude journal also used and in perfect condition for... 10 cents. I thought it divine intervention and snatched it up. But I didn't start reading it until August 21. That was a desperate day for me. I was near panicked and breathless and didn't know what we were going to do about our lack of money or prospects for earning some. But this book changed my outlook. And changing my outlook has changed my life in ways I couldn't have imagined. And the work came. And the money thing is ok now. I have read this book and written my 5 things I'm grateful for daily without fail, no matter how bad things were on any given morning. It's part of my daily morning ritual. And I was amazed to discover that I always have to narrow down my list because there are many more than 5 things I could write every day. Thank you, Sarah Ban Breathnach, for writing this powerful book. And thank you to whomever didn't want it, leaving it just for me at the big used bookstore in Nashville.

A busy day today

So, when we made the decision to move "out here," I knew I wanted one thing more than any other. And that was to be free. So please let me define freedom. To me, it means I avoid being so busy, so stressed, so over-scheduled, that I have the dreaded knot between my shoulder blades and the stress-related headache. But today, I find myself smack in the middle of just that kind of busy-ness. And even though it's 9 pm and everything shuts down at the crack of 8 pm around here, I still have one more errand to run before I can call it a night. "How did this happen," I ask myself? And my answer is, "Everywhere I go, there I am." I simply moved. I didn't change who I am. Therefore I will probably continue to be busy - too busy - at least for a little while longer. I am looking foward to 5 straight days off next week. We will probably have family in for Christmas, which will be wonderful. And while I will be sad if no one can come, I will not take the down time for granted, I promise.

We have been researching the canvas for the luxury tent thingie (ok, I can't bring myself to call it a resort), and I am so excited. I have one little problem though. Due to events of the past few years, I have no money for this venture. Somehow, it will happen. I will make it so. If visualizing and dreaming and writing and scheming can make it so, it will be. I can't give up my old life, sell the newer car and keep the paid off one, get rid of half my stuff and move 650 miles simply to settle in the middle. I want to make the jump and move out to the middle of nowhere. I had a dream last night that I had a tv show of my own and all the accompanying fame and money, a custom made car with special windows that allowed me to see out but no one to see in, a spectacularly beautiful home and every material thing that one could desire. But I had really bad hair. And I was crying a lot. And I was exhausted. And my beautiful home was a mess. And I kept getting pulled over on the freeway because I was driving too SLOW and I couldn't merge into traffic. And it was all because I was too busy, so overbooked and expected everywhere that 1) I didn't have time to fix my hair, 2) I didn't have time to learn the ins and outs of the car, and 3) I didn't have time to sleep or see my family. I woke up and grabbed my journal so I could write the dream down before I forgot it.

So if you're out there in cyberville, reading this, and you have any idea about how to make this dream come true, please share. My zen (and my hair) depend on you.

Time of Many Firsts

It has been ages since I've posted and some have contacted me to find out what's up these days. David and I moved from Houston to a tiny town in West Texas. I believe that this new place is the anti-Houston, with it's 5 minute commutes and everybody-knows-everybody smallness, which is exactly why I love it here. I really do love Houston, but I just couldn't take returning to my old job and the accompanying 60 hour work week and 2 hours + daily commutes. Strangely, I do miss public transportation, but that's another story for another day.

I have settled into a new job and David has moved his business here. Since opportunities are fewer, he also works a regular part-time job. We are doing ok. We watch what we spend and things just fall into place. David is working more than I'd like for him to. The whole idea was to have weekends free and he does work some weekends. But he is enjoying the part-time job so we will have free time around his schedule.

We are getting deep into some plans to open luxury camping facilities. We hope to operating by May, just in time to shut down during July and August, the hottest time of the year around here and surprisingly, the rainy season. But at least we can get started. The plan is to give people who normally would not camp a chance to go to a remote area and enjoy a few days off-grid. I have been asking the Universe for a business that will allow us to live on our remote land and make a living at the same time, and so this idea came. People are already asking us for information about booking, etc. I will post as we progress.

While researching other luxury camping accommodations, I stumbled onto a blog by a lovely and articulate lady named Lin and her husband, Mark, who bravely did what we have been dreaming of doing, which is relocate to the desert and live off-the-grid. I was googling some stuff this morning after I finished my morning meditation and found her blog (here at http://www.creekjournal.blogspot.com/). I had big plans today to finish painting the kitchen... Instead, I sat at the computer most of the day, reading her blog from the first post all the way to the most recent post. I simply couldn't stop reading about her interesting life. I suggest you go check it out, too, if you have any interest at all in changing your life.

It's good to be back.