Self Portrait Challenge
(November’s Challenge: Glam!)
While I don’t own any make-up and consider myself dressed up when I brush my teeth and put on a bra, I still have my grandmother’s pearls.
oh yes, and my sass,
I still have my sass.
Month: October 2006
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Another Place and Time: Our Straw bale House
It is strange now looking back; I knew we were leaving AZ for Maine for over two years and tried my best to absorb it all. Every day I focused on the winds and the grasses and the sky and yet it fades in my memory already.
But these pictures bring it back.
This is the house we built (in 1994-95)
Trevor and I lived in Tucson in 1993 and were exploring Arizona looking for our perfect place; we wanted land and solitude on which to build our house. We found our spot in northeast Az about 3 miles south of the Navajo Reservation in an unincorporated “township” nicknamed “Alpine Ranches”. We drew up the blueprints while living in Tucson and sent them up to Flagstaff for inspection as we wanted to build to code. Once we had approval, we moved up and camped out while we began to build.
It was the perfect place, peaceful and private
(no-one for 2-3 miles and on a dirt road).
We chose our spot on an ancient lava flow and began to dig.
my husband, a mean digger
(trenches for our footer/slab)
after the foundation set, we began to build the framing
friends helped us get the roof trusses on
then we laid the foundation for the bale walls
(the bales were pushed down onto the rebar for stability)
it was monsoon season so we put blue tarps on the outside of the house and stored the straw inside to keep it dry
the bales were notched with a saw to fit around the posts
and we finished the walls
(it took us 3-4 weeks)
and lay netting all over the straw bales and made giant needles for sewing it all together
and then we put on the first of three layers of stucco, the scratch coat
and the finish coat
and then began to work on the interior, all of the walls inside were standard 2×4 construction and so went up rather quickly. I plastered all of the walls so that they blended with the bale walls and kept the organic texture of the interior.
Our front door
we hauled a trailer-load of Saltillo tile up from Mexico and laid it in every room in the house
the sunroom
living room and kitchen
kitchen
bathroom
we installed 4 -75 watt solar panels and a 2500 watt inverter for our electricity
and it was enough.
I built a small cold frame for winter greens
we put in a cistern and collected rainwater off the roof for our water supply,
(a challenge where 7-9 inches of rain a year is common)
it was a wonderful life and I miss it but living there made my soul feel weak; I missed the connection of family and old, deep friendships. So we left the house we built and sometimes I still long for the winds that blow there.
But I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, I really would.
(this is at the end of our driveway, you can almost see the house far behind me to the right.)
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Winter approaches
and I can hear my mother calling to my younger self
“dress warmly, for I love you”
I can feel her soft, veined hands as she drapes me in the scarf,
and I am small, still thin-boned and loose limbed.
My mother is only a phone call away now
yet I can feel the pull of age on her as she drifts
and I cannot follow for I have babes of my own to bundle.
I can feel the wind shift and I pull them closer to me,
for I love them and want them to stay warm.
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Self Portrait Challenge
Oct:Your Imperfect Self
Nakedness
This is new,
this place that self portraiture has put me in.
I am vulnerable and bruised and raw.
I am pale
and needing reassurance that these things are normal;
this sadness, this moment of dark thought,
a sigh.
I know there is nothing new here, I am just as fragile and
sturdy as the next woman
I can be lonely or thirsty or lost and I am
still human
still good,
still worthy of love.
It can be difficult but I am not alone.
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A Small Catastrophe and A Few Delights
The Catastrope
Jesse got a new Gameboy for his birthday and has been madly playing a Lego Knights Kingdom game on it. The cartridge has a multitude of levels and it takes Jess a few days of hair-pulling, jaw-clenching practice to get through the level and on to the next (and when you get to the end of the level you are issued a password and that allows you to keep your win and continue on in the future).
Jesse finally beat this one beast of a level this afternoon and was so thrilled he flung himself up the stairs and
smack-down.
the code was gone, on to the next screen.
Poor kid, he needed ice cream and lots of it.
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Delights
It rained today and so the kids and I took bubble baths and made molasses cookies and opened up the futon into a platform for watching movies and eating popcorn.
We played games
and cuddled in our blankets
and let the heat blow through our hair
and we were happy.
Happy like little campers.
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Daily Stream O’ Drivel
(with a rant and wee vignettes)
why is it that everything smells like a Necco wafer today?
started the woodstove for the 1st time this season; it is damp and cold outside
I’ve cut out coffee for 8 days and am feeling a bit calmer, less fierce
rant—my mother asked me the other day if I was starting a diet before heading to our family reunion in a few weeks. Bwahahahaha! Oh, Right, because I can’t have fun unless I am in a size smaller? What, my family won’t be glad to see me? Sheesh, my whole life she has worried about her (normal) weight and the weight of my sister and myself. if I want to lose weight I will but never because I am going somewhere, only because it is unhealthy or slowing me down. And if I did lose weight she would respond with a flood of compliments about how great I look (which to me, always implies I looked like crap before) I am fine, I am fine, I am fine, please leave me out of your weight worries. I have a life to live and I will ponder it while I eat the white chocolate oatmeal cookies with currants that I baked yesterday.
P.S. please don’t talk about weight in front of my children, they are happy with their food and their bodies and I’d like to keep them that way.
poor Lucy puppy, she was spayed last week and is fighting a nasty infection in her incision. she is on antibiotics though and should be fine (if she would just stop eating dollar bills, candles, pizza on the counter, the foam inside bike helmets, pennies, cat fur and anything other morsels she can find).
Roo
I’ve been thinking about the last self portrait post I did and wanted to add to what I wrote. It is not that I am an unsocial person; I love small gatherings and have some very close friendships. It is the group thing, the large semi-anonymous, noisy gatherings that I have a hard time with. It comes from being Highly Sensitive and overwhelmed by too much input at once, too many conversations at once. I need to be gentler with myself about this and know my limits (I often say yes because I want to but then I don’t enjoy myself and I regret it). And while Xanga is a large gathering of sorts, the interactions are still one at a time and I have the chance to respond in time. It is very different than a huge real-life Xanga party. That said, if you all have one please invite me so I won’t feel left out.
Wee Vignettes:
Trevor: “Roo, would you please stop antagonizing your brother?”
Roo: “But I love to play “tag”, Daddy!!”
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Jesse: “Mommy, when are you going to cook some high quality food? We have been eating this same old stuff for, like, forever!”
Me: “what are you thinking of, what can I make?”
Jesse, “you know, pizza, spaghetti, fish, those kinds of things only much better than you already cook them.”
Me: (dryly)”I’ll get right on that”
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Jesse: Mommy, how can you be so good at that video game?”
Me: “I guess because I like it and enjoy playing it with you”
Jesse: “yeah but you’re a woman plus you’re old”
Me: (dryly) “It must be a miracle!!!”
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I Love Doug Savage.
the end.
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Unschooling Info
(for those who asked)
Some Favorite Unschooling/Natural Parenting Books
Dumbing Us Down–Gatto
The Teenage Liberation Handbook–Llewellyn
How Children Learn–Holt
How Children Fail–Holt
The Unprocessed Child–Fitzenreiter
Homeschooling Our Children, Unscooling Ourselves–Mckee
The Natural Child–Hunt
Playful Parenting–Cohen
Unconditional Parenting–Kohn
Stopping at Every Lemonade Stand–Vollbracht
Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who Don’t Go to School– Llewellyn
Parenting A Free Child: An Unschooled Life–Kream
Websites
- learning in freedom
- educationrevolution
- thenaturalchild
- radicalunschooling
- thenauturalchildproject
- johntaylorgatto
- libertarianunschooling
- unboundedpublications
A Few Favorite Unschooling Blogs
(just a few, by no means all)
- barenakedfamily
- ourjoyfullife
- anunschoolinglife
- fivefreebirds
- uptoparr
- livefreelearnfreeblog
- unschoolinglife
- knitonequilttoo
- anunschoolinglife
- organiclearning
- robinsblueskies
“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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