HOWDY

Hi.  Yeah, a little unplanned blogging sabbatical.  Without any warning.  Sorry about that.  But the revival is here and if you are too then thanks for sticking around and welcome back.  I can’t even remember the number of times I sat down to blog; the number of blog posts I wrote in my head – in the shower, in bed, on my bike, on an airplane, on a dog walk, washing the dishes….I think you get the picture.  Like most modern day humans – I have been busy.  A brief summary: yoga teacher training, master gardener course, dog group, work, play, travel, home, husband, and of course the daily adventure of living in Alaska. 

First, the yoga.  This wasn’t really on my radar. At all.  But I stumbled into the opportunity in pursuit of master gardener training (wait listed).  A couple who are both teachers and owned the studio I attended sporadically while I was in grad school and lived in mid-town decided to teach one more teacher training before they moved out of state.  The original dates were in the autumn and I knew I couldn’t fit it in my schedule.  And then my sweet cat got sick.   That’s another post entirely (Loving Fiercely. And Learning).  By the time I lost him it was mid December and I was spent, by all measurements.  Then the dates of the teacher training changed to start in January.  The pieces fell into place and I found myself in awe in a class of amazing people.  Time flew by, mostly.  For nearly every other weekend from mid January to mid May I spent Friday evenings, Saturday days and Sunday days cramming my head with yoga and all things yoga related.  And then there was the homework and the physical aspect.  It was an amazing experience.  I still have more work to do before I can hang out my own shingle or work for most studios. 

Next, the master gardener.  I have tried to take this course a couple times and it’s always at a horrible time – great if you are retired or maybe a stay at home mom, but pretty much horrible for anyone else.  It was an interesting experience.  I can't say that I could recommend the Alaska version to anyone.  Unless you perhaps know absolutely nothing about gardening.  At all.  And you perhaps have done no online research or read a single gardening book.  I completed the course, because that's how I am and I did learn a few nuggets of information and I'm excited to continue working the yard into edible shape.  

The rest is really just the slow fun progression of life.  Tonka is still working and loving it (at 11 1/2 years old!!).  The girls still alternate loving and hating each other.  The man is still working hard and succeeding as an owner of multiple businesses.  The economy is declining here and I work less at science and more at marketing.  I play outside every day.  Every day.  Because I love it and it makes me smile.  I travel whenever I can (Costa Rica last January).  And the house.....progresses......slowly.....but surely....and I love it every day.  Don't worry, I have some pictures to show what we have been up to.  I keep sorting stuff and donating (no one needs four whisks - four!!) and putting some stuff in the camper van.  Oh yeah, we got a camper van.  It's fun and all the dogs and our gear can get out for a weekend adventure and have a place to be out of the weather and bugs.  There is work at the shop too, a project I call the build out and the man calls the mezzanine.  It's the creation of an enclosed space for a micro yoga studio for me (when I'm not out skiing, biking, running, boating, etc.) and drum/music for him (because I keep my music toys at the house).  We also store all our 'stuff' (read: crap) up top until it's needed or can be moved into finished space at the house (out of season gear and furniture).  There, now you are all caught up and we can proceed.  

Loving Fiercely. And Learning.

December 12, 2015 ~10am snow finally came to Anchorage and frogcat left me

In the words of a friend of mine - His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

I had to just take a break for a while.  I'm back now.  Here are some picture of my sweet boy who I have missed every day for over a year.  It has been the first year of my life with no cat (that I can remember) to boss me around.  Yes, it has been odd.  

Frog was a special boy - I mean that in the biological way - he had glaucoma and a cataract in one eye when I found him.  The eye specialist was thrilled because he had seen very few cases of this in his many years of research and as a practicing vet.  Boy did I feel special!  

Then he got kidney disease at a very young age.  Great, more special!  And he ended special too - he survived years of kidney disease (thanks to my awesome vet and vigilant daily observation and medication) to die from a brain tumor.  So special that the staff know me by name and his vet made a donation in his name for research on his many challenges.  The special just never stopped.  Kind of like that Chinese curse - may you live in interesting times.....

As with most pets in my life the lessons were many - how to love fiercely, despite biological challenges, and how to observe and trust my gut instinct - and so many more.  

Peace as white as snow be with you.

Covering some walls and the big hole in the floor

The spray foam insulation is simply awesome at getting the R-factor we wanted, but not so great at not dispersing itself around the room.  And it's a real pain to get out of your hair.  After a summer of looking at it we finally got around to covering it up.  

In case you don't know it, wood is lovely to look at but it's not static.  It dries and it twists and the pieces aren't all the same.  Kind of like my knitting sometimes....  which makes using it not as easy as it looks.  There were a lot of interesting sounds being emitted from the man as he worked on this seemingly simple task.  

Also, he's kind of a perfectionist.  And we had not installed any lights yet when he was doing this.  The most entertaining part though - using the laser level.  It made us laugh hysterically and then try to figure out what looked like the best compromise.  

Meanwhile, downstairs in the kitchen....Chad set me up to sand the walls.  It sounds so simple, sand the walls.  

First step, plastic the kitchen off from the rest of the house.  Claustrophobics need not apply.  I made him take some pictures of my ridiculous outfit and to prove that I actually do work on the house.  He may or may not have sent them to me.  Next time, I will have him take the photos on my camera.  He's a very busy man at the moment - more on that later. 

Voila! Post sanding miracle.  I had him check on me a couple times.  There were some technical issues.  Like the sanding pad not staying attached to the sander.  Those things can really fly.  Good thing there was plastic to stop it.  I swear, it wasn't me.  The sander chose that particular job to have the velcro fail.  Velcro!  I had no idea that a sander used velcro to attach the sanding discs.  Huh.  I also learned a lot about my caulking technique and we discussed how we might approach the scene differently upstairs (read: I suck at it and the material doesn't sand well when the expert does it either).  

Giant hole in the floor in the middle of the house....from the former furnace grate.  If you recall from previous posts, the furnace was still amazing at heating the house, but slightly dangerous and everyone's feet were susceptible to having grate imprints seared onto the bottom of their paws.  Searing is for burgers, not for paws.  While we already took care of the furnace upgrade, we still had the big grate in the floor.  One dog was terrified of stepping on it and stuff falls through a grate.  So we installed an interim cover.  Ultimately we hope to incorporate some kind of ladder cover thing into the stairs.  Whenever we tackle that.  I'm betting on 2017 but hoping for 2016.  We only dropped the cover into the crawlspace twice.  Ok, three times.  I'm not admitting any more.  Nothing major got broken, therefore success.  

And most delightful of all, ending the day in the back yard with a fire in the bowl.  No tails got singed either.  More success!

Ceiling...slowly

The upstairs ceiling has been our focus project the last few...weeks....  Chad is still super busy at work, which is great, but cold weather is here.  We debated a long time (like all summer) about whether or not to raise the center part of the ceiling.  Ultimately we thought it would not be great for air flow, so then we moved on to debating what material to use to cover the beams with.  Plywood won.  And then the rains started.  Do you know what it's like to cut plywood in the rain?  Yeah.  Hence the slow.  We live a balanced life: a stack of covered wood in the front AND back yards.  

The other ceiling debate (there are actually several other ceiling debates in truth...) is about fans.  One fan, two fans, hard wired, switch activated, size, color.....maybe not that last one...  Chad got an appropriate one at a great price and installed it on the east side.  Switch activated, but can be hard wired later if we change our mind.  

My current goal is to get enough warning before project work starts so that I can move stuff out of the way or cover it up.  Which we knew would be the process that we were signing up for when we decided to live in the house while we remodel it.  The adventure continues!  

A windowsill and other weekend excitement

Last weekend we decided that we would no longer work (outside home) on Sundays.  Which is a good thing because no other day this past week had time for house work.  Bright and early Sunday afternoon Chad put on the last two boards on the exterior walls in the kitchen.  He did some of the caulking too until I realized I could be doing that.  A little learning curve, but I think I'm on track to do a bunch of the remaining caulking.  Which will give me hulk like forearms.  

We only made one trip to the store, to buy the rain cover, and two trips to the storage unit.  Err, three actually but the first one doesn't count because he forgot the toolbox keys.  Even though the ground was wet the tools and wood and man were dry.  

At one point Chad called me outside to show me something about the woodworking.  When I came out he looked up to talk to me and gasped at what he saw behind me.  Not at all disturbing!  It was a car on fire a couple blocks over.  Once the fire trucks arrived it was out pretty quick.  And we got to meet some neighbors.  

Frogcat is still large and in charge.  The great white supervisor.  He loves to hang out in the rain.  Unlike the dogs.

He had enough of my photo session when he realized I didn't have any food. 

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, the first board of the window sill gets tried out for size.  

The man and his tools.  After the sharpening box was located and the tools were sharpened.  I found one of his hats when I did a Friday evening belly crawl through the trailer looking for his running shoes so we could explore the woods with the dogs.  Who needs a 'boot camp' workout at the gym when you could just live like I do?

Too bad the whole shop won't fit under the canopy.  12x12 is a surprisingly large space.  And the wood shaving curls will be awesome fire starters.....

I did a lot of little things around the house while I was waiting for tasks that required my help.  I did laundry.  And vacuumed.  And did dishes.  And found creative places to dry the dishes.  And found the dish drying rack in a box.  I emptied several boxes in fact.  And found a place to stack them.  And I shopped around for a kitchen sink.  Very productive.  

And at the end of the day we had this to show for our efforts.  A window silled in saphele.  A southern hemisphere mahogany.  I get to oil it a couple times this week and he gets to finish shimming it out.  Two more kitchen windows to sill and trim.  Watch out world we are just flying along!  But we did decide on a kitchen sink.  I think.  

National S'mores Day

Monday was National S'mores Day.  We lit up the fire bowl and roasted away.  After the (soy) hot dogs of course.

Sunday house

Current view from the front door.  I feel like there is more light than there used to be. The wood stack is more in the living room than it used to be.  Probably not related.  At all.  

And a shelf that was temporarily staged in the studio has been moved to the arctic entry for seasonal gear storage.  Which mostly means my search stuff right now.   Though Chad has plans to put up a couple bike hooks on the other side of the arctic entry so we can hit the road after work.  Someday.  

The wood stack moved so the stove could be installed.  It's awesome.  I even cooked breakfast on it yesterday.   Which is amazing in more than one way.  Especially when I discovered I had no utensils beyond sharp knives and plastic forks.  The eggs prevailed.  So did the facon.  

Next to the stove is the next challenge.  That's where the sink goes.  We spent an hour or so at the local show room on Friday looking at sinks.  We found the perfect one.  But it's ridiculous expensive.  Reusing the wood that supported the chimney (where the washer and dryer are now located) for the sink base and counter is awesome.  We also had some storage epiphanies.  Which is good because the sink is not likely to appear immediately but the dishes will need somewhere to be.    

There's generally more stuff in the pantry now.  Some of it is human food.  Kind of a step up from total camping, but not by much.  Except for the fridge.  That's way better than a cooler.  

The cat is getting really good at supervising.  And getting the humans to open the back door.  He loves hanging outside.  Even when it's raining and the dogs come inside.  He sits in the grass and contemplates.  

No changes to the bathroom - it's still pretty basic.  Which is nice and kind of weird.  It's like a time capsule.  

No real changes to the office either.  Still serving as parking area for my mountain bike.  Ideas for the interior wall coverings are starting to surface.  Giant whiteboard is likely.  Maybe even magnetic.  Since the fridge isn't.  

Nothing more than box shuffling is going on in the studio at the moment.  Several Eureka moments this weekend when I found vessels for drinking out of, real forks, a wooden spoon, two bowls, and sharp knives.  After I bought new ones.  I also set up a donation box in there.  Which already has stuff in it (house purging success!).  

The stairs are....unchanged.  Imagine that wall not there.  Someday.  

The drums are still in the 'closet'.  Which I hope will be a bathroom.  Someday.  

And the rest of the upstairs...is being lived in.  We have some recycled materials that we recently acquired that we are pondering the use of.  Like a front door that may become a headboard.  And a garage door that may become ceiling tiles.  Bet you can't wait to see that.  

Looking forward to wall coverings.  So I can stop getting insulation in my hair.  Someday.