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Most Viewed (but probably not the best) Blog Posts

Hotspringing in Idaho: Celebrating my Birthday!

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My eyes are squeezed shut, I am gripping the sides of the car, my feet are pushing into the floorboard I am so nervous I have to pee.  I am terrified.  There was an upside down car laying in the boulder field just below the road, granted, It looked like it had been there for 40 years or so, but it instantly gave an image to what I was feeling.  I have a phobia of mountain roads and yet I regularly sit in the passenger seat while Adam patiently tries to drive while I freak out.  Why?  Well,I like picking huckleberries and I love hot springs so I find myself in the situation more often than I would like to admit.  How did I get here this time? I am entering the fourth decade of life and to celebrate we turned off our cell phones, threw food, clothes, the tent, the dogs and the kids into the car and embarked on a road trip to places we have never been before.  A loop through Idaho stopping to dip into a few of the many hot springs that dot the state a...
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Construction Update 6: A Few Things Finished!

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There is dirt under my finger nails is the same color as the weeks old bruise under the nail of my thumb.   I took last week off of work. Adam took off the week before Christmas, and the upstairs flooring is 99% done: the bedrooms have wide maple planks, the great room upstairs is oak parquet, and a friend laid most of the tiles in the upstairs bathroom. The stair landings are done.    Risers placed. Treads still need to be cut and installed. It was my goal to tackle a giant pile of reclaimed flooring and get it ready to install. To install our heat system, our floors need to be sanded and finished.   I wanted to install heat the first week of January.   Those days have come and gone, and while the pile of flooring is now half the size that it was when I started, it still stands between heat and appliances. I sort boards by tongue and groove size. I scrape layers of dirt that peel away like thick apple skins from tongues and grooves.  ...
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Time in Lists

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Every morning I make a list of three things that made me happy the day before. A practice I started when life became crazy - and that was a while ago - years ago. Little things: walks, dinner, kid crafts, baking bread, flowers opening, bathing, sleeping in, having a shower to shower in. Time is tracked in lists. April - The numbers of eggs our chickens lay per day.  What is the average?  (3.6) What is the MAD (mean absolute deviation)? (.706) What is the normal range? (2.89 - 4.3) May - The wild flowers we see on hikes. The birds we mange to identify. Time moves fast, slow, doesn't exist at all. Adam dates a check the 8th.  "Where have you been", I say. "Today is the 15th." Time is tracked in shopping lists and meal plans . Ivory pours over recipes for cookies, candies and desserts.  She creates excuses to makes sweets and delivers them to neighbors: toffee, gummies, french macrons.  I discover wishful items added to my shopping:  ...
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