vulnerability in all it's truth

i am to a place in my life where i am ready to become a mom, to grow our family together with brandon, & to pour love into a tiny little human life. the trouble is, it isn't just up to me. it is not that brandon is opposed to this heavy wish i carry in my heart every day (although he may not be as ready as me). rather, things just aren't panning out at work. i have been waiting & waiting to become benefited (i.e., to get insurance) but each month i am told "just a little longer." so i buy another month of over-priced, high-deductible, catastrophe health insurance in hopes of the legitimate university insurance coming through.


we literally cannot afford to have a baby because i make too much for medicaid to foot the bill but not enough to afford private insurance that includes maternity coverage. the university has decided to preemptively put a spending freeze in place--that's right, we live in a state that operates billions of dollars over the deficit line, but they want to be careful not to make a tiny dent in the surplus. i'm certain this sounds like a "whoa is me" pity party, but a lovely friend of mine reminded me that our blogs are places we can be vulnerable. so i'm putting it out there that i am sad about the way in which my job dictates this decision that my heart feels ready to embrace. sigh. 

viva la pura vida

we leave tonight for a week in costa rica with our great little laramie-family (lamily? laramily?). 

even though these are random pictures i pulled off the internet, this is what i envision the trip looking like: 

yoga,

beachcombing and bathing,

slow walks to nowhere in particular,

lots of bathing in the pool, as it is supposed to be 90 degrees,

& hopefully we can take in a few sunsets while we enjoy fruity drinks with little umbrellas.

my suitcase is all packed: one carry-on & i am ready for a week on the beach! 

we tried to make it to this part of costa rica last time we were there but our poor spanish & inability to discern the exact bus route left us just a few miles away from nosara. when i get back, hopefully i will have pictures of my own to document all of our laziness, lounging, surfing, & adventures.

kitchen vision

we are so happy to own our little house. people here in town have been moving lately & the horror stories about landlords & absurd price increases make me quite content to deal with our own home in our own way. it certainly helps that we pay either the same amount or less each month than most renters in this town. if ever you want to become a slumlord, i think this is the town where you can get away with it. i digress...

other than our big window/pass-through project & our anti-pass-through project of taking out the door behind the fridge (yes, there was a random door sans handle that connected our kitchen & our bedroom) we haven't done much work inside the house. i am kind of itching for a project, which is why i am pinning all kinds of kitchen ideas. one of these days i will actually post pictures of our kitchen as it is now. for today, i just want to put together my "vision" for our kitchen.

generally i am not a big fan of white cabinets. however, the blue-grey bottom cabinets & white upper cabinets in this picture have me swooning. i also love the white subway tile backsplash.

from here.

the hardware on our cabinets is really cool & i am pretty sure original (i.e., old, but in a vintagey way). this picture inspired me to keep our hardware, which is a big money saver, and just ORB it ala sherry at young house love.

i have always loved concrete counters, but i think my dad might actually consider killing me if i ever went through with installing them. he is vehemently opposed to them and given that he is a contractor who knows his stuff i suppose i should trust him. i found this great tutorial about making your own stainless steel counters. although the picture won't post well here, this is the counter inspiration i am currently sold on.

from here.
our floors are also black and white checker like this kitchen! bonus!

i also love wood & butcher block counters, which i think you can buy from ikea. i hear they take a fair amount of upkeep to prevent staining & watermarks though. while i am not totally convinced this isn't the route for us, as of today i prefer the look of stainless above. our sink is the original cast iron white sink & while it looks cool, i have always been drawn to the farmhouse sinks like the one below. the other problem with our cast iron sink is that it stains easily so i am going through bar keepers friend like a fiend over here!

from here.

to recap, my vision includes:
-keep our existing floors
-paint the lower cabinets peppercorn grey or something similar
-paint our upper cabinets white
-white subway tile the backsplash around the sink
-ORBing our existing hardware so it is nice and dark
-replace the counters with stainless steel or butcher block
-replace the existing sink with a farmhouse style (maybe--i could live with our current sink, which would save at least a couple of benjamins)
-installing a permanent dishwasher to the right of the sink

one day at a time, right?

birds, blooms, & manure

this past weekend it was just me and the (mini) farm. brandon was away in woods hole, massachusetts completing his arctic safety training so he can be ready to fend off polar bears & build emergency fires this july on the glacier commonly known as greenland. 

the weekend gave me a better sense of how much the chickens have become brandon's "thing". in fact, a few weeks back he said, "you know how you have your dog people & your cat people? well, i think i'm more of a chicken person." chooks don't require too much, but they do require that you get up at a decent time to let them out of the coop, clean out their water dish morning and night, & put them to bed at a decent hour. our chickens have been entirely spoiled on a yard full of dandelions, so they also demand (yes, demand!) to be let out of their coop to roam & range our yard at least once a day. 

my money is on this one being a rooster. brandon is not convinced.

yard birds in action.

this is frankie, who is my favorite. she is a total loner & scared
of her own shadow, but i find all of that quite endearing.

the bleeding heart by our front steps is doing even better than last week.
i hope the lavender in the planter does as well. 

i finally got my garden prepped and ready. we will have two raised beds, an in ground bed (against the fence), two potato cage towers, & an experimental "gutter of greens" hanging from the top rail of the fence. i am hoping the llama manure i got from one of my coworkers is the black gold i am banking on!

the potato towers are in the bottom of this photo.

what a typical evening at our place looks like: drinks on the back deck while we enjoy the sounds of our yard birds clucking around from the comfort of our adirondack chairs. it is a good life indeed!

hey rowan, can you spot the sprinting chicken?

this is my experimental "gutter of greens".
i didn't want to allocate precious garden space in our raised beds
to lettuce so we gave this gutter a new life as a planter,
which hangs from the top rail of our fence.

this is my pea-bed, which is next to the chicken coop.
although it needs to be weeded quite badly,
the peas don't seem to mind their company.

 i plan to get my tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, kale, onions, garlic, broccoli, brussel sprouts, & carrots in over the course of the next few evenings. it feels wrong to plant my garden before my birthday here in this high altitude place we call home, but all the signs are there for a longer growing season. fingers crossed!

witty decoding

i just stumbled across this blog, suburban snapshots, and i managed to lose about an hour of my life perusing her witty takes on family and life. the author is quite down-to-earth in a way that pinterest and facebook do not permit, and she is a lovely reminder that the internet does not exist for the sole purpose of making women feel inadequate. my favorite post thus far is entitled spousal communications decoded. although she alludes to heterosexual relationships only, i suspect that similar things float around the homes of all couples, regardless of gender.

he said

• i cleaned while you were gone. = anything i had to hand wash is still sitting in the sink fermenting what will eventually become the key ingredient in a herpes vaccine.

• it's not in there, i checked. = when I opened the cabinet door and gingerly moved my head from right to left, then promptly exited the room, i didn't see the thing i was looking for.

• does this shirt look okay? = does this shirt increase my chances of having sex with you later?

• i have to run to home depot, need anything while i'm out? = i hope you don't need anything while i'm out, because chances are i'll take longer than the donner party and i already forgot what you asked for.

she said

• i'm making such a good dinner tonight. = i'mma dirty every single pot and pan we own, even the good ones that need to be washed by hand.

• 'give me five minutes, i just have to do a work thing. =  i just posted a picture to facebook and i'm compulsively refreshing my page until somebody comments.

• check out my new jeans. = your odds of having sex with me later depend entirely on your answer.

• i'm running to target for a birthday card, i'll be right back. = we have at least eighty dollars in the account, right?

stop waiting

yesterday i rode past a car with a bumper sticker that said "life is not a dress rehearsal." i didn't think much of it at the time, other than, "i bet their other bumper sticker is the ubiquitous 'tolerance' [comprised of various religious symbols] sticker." (which of course, it was. can you say predictable?)

today in spin class though, i felt overwhelmed by the realization that i do live life like it is a rehearsal for the "next thing." i am constantly envisioning what the next stage of life will bring and how things will be different (i.e. better). i recall selecting the name of our blog in hopes of being regularly reminded of my intention to live in the here-and-now. i guess this is to be an ongoing struggle for me, but for some reason, that purple bumper sticker wedged itself in my unconcious and forced me to face this reality today. ah, bumper stickers, changing the world one car at a time!

after class i stumbled upon this quote and it resonated with these thoughts i have rumbling around in my mind about being present:

the real struggle is about you: you, a person who has to learn to live in the real world. to inhabit her own skin, to know her own heart, to stop waiting for her life to begin. -caroline knapp 

my lovely bleeding hearts, just outside our front door.

one of the things on my "one day" list had always been to have bleeding heart flowers in my own yard. last fall i planted this one and have been taking extra-special care of it. (don't tell my other flowers.) it is lovely to have one of my favorite flowers greet me each time i come home. me and my bleeding heart love the sight of these bleeding hearts.

haters gonna hate

this is probably wrong to find amusing, but i am mostly impressed with :1) the baby's total lack of reaction to the giant cat behind him and 2) the parents ability to not have launched into full-on freak-out mode. 

 

and the take-home message is: don't dress your baby like something viewed as deliciously edible by an apex predator while in the presence of said predators.

hen house happenings

the girls spent their first night in the hen house. i was a nervous wreck, absolutely certain we would come out this morning to find six dead chickens. luckily my worry was in vain (as per usual). hurray!

we had talked about getting chickens for quite a while, even at our old house. when we moved in to our home though, we knew this dilapidated shack in the back would be an ideal place to house our yard birds. i need to take pictures of the inside coop, which brandon has made quite nice for our little peepers. in the meantime, here is the run, where they spend the waking hours. 

the string to the left is my pea trellis, inspired by poppies in sisters.

it has a nice roof to keep them dry and brandon burried the poultry wire about a foot deep to keep predators (i.e., raccoon, fox, harvey, etc.) from digging their way in. brandon has poured many hours into this taj mahal of chicken love. my primary contributions were using the staple gun to secure the wire and painting the door like a good hippie. yes, it is brown and turquoise. yes, those are leaves stenciled across it. what of it?

harvey regularly entertains this pose.

off of the right side of the building shack (see above picture), there is another door. brandon set it up so we can access the nesting boxes (and eggs) without having to disrupt the birds too much.

the mottled one in front is the only one with a name: frankie.
mostly because she looked like a franciscan monk when we
brought her home, with a large white spot on her head
and a circle of black "hair" around that.  

we have three buff orpingtons (the orangish ones), one plymouth barred rock ("frankie") and two unknowns. we hoped to have three orpingtons and three barred rocks, but the feed store put two similar looking breeds together and we ended up with two of the others. we think they might be black stars. in which case we have a brood consisting of the left column below:

from my free-range chicken garden book

and lest you think our life has been taken over by chickens, i will share a photo of the sour cherry crumble pie i made last night. as you can tell it was a hit, with each of us going back for seconds. even my grandma would have wanted more than a "lil' sliver" of this pie! i am looking forward to having another slice tonight while i sit out on our back deck, watching the chickens peck around.

as of late

holly inspired me to put together this "fun" post. lately i've been a bit serious in life and on the blog, so here's to being light in spirit!

Current TV show(s): parenthood and modern family are my TV addictions these days, which have identical story-telling styles and subject matter, with differing approaches. both however make me think incessantly about becoming a momma.

Current Food: i'm trying to drink green monster smoothies daily. mostly in hopes of obtaining miraculously clear and radiant skin. results are questionable thus far.

Current Movie: i really want to see friends with kids but our theater has yet to show it.

Current Wishlist: a different mattress. neither brandon nor i wake up feeling rested when we sleep in our own bed. we do however feel rested when we stay at other folks' homes, which is maybe a sign that we are to visit friends and family more often?

Current Music: um, i'm really into hawiian music lately. (is that totally bizarre?) it soothes me greatly and since i have little-to-no idea what they are singing about, it keeps me from getting drawn down a rabbit trail of my own convoluted thoughts.

Current Book: last child in the woods. this book is making me incredibly grateful for my childhood, and the unstructured playtime i enjoyed among the sagebrush- and ponderosa-filled trails between my friend's house and mine, lots of exploring outside at lei's ranch, and watching my mom cultivate her garden and greenhouse.

Current Worry: if i will have enough vacation time this summer for all of the glorious trips on our horizon. can anyone say "first world problem"?

Current Indulgence: enjoying all of the samples with my recent sephora order. why yes i would love a minuscule sample of a product i can't afford in real life. and yes, i will stretch it for months like the thrifty gal my momma taught me to be!

Current Obsession: checking on my tomato starts that are refusing to grow. although a watched pot never boils, i have yet to hear an adage about carefully observed and lovingly coaxed tomato seeds refusing to sprout.

and there you have it folks, a totally self-centered post that brought me a bit of mid-day joy.

those who have known

the most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. these persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. beautiful people do not just happen.

– elisabeth kubler-ross

my intention for this month is to seek light, which takes on many forms (i hope!). even though this quote is a bit heavy and is from the expert on grief and loss, i found it speaking to me about the ways in which the heaviness of all of our lives brings to light our goodness. i think the defeat, suffering, struggle, and loss work to erode away the shells we all try to maintain and forces us to reveal our otherwise hidden tenderness.