Busy Hands Homestead

Time is rushing past.   The windows are down, my hair tangling in the wind, as I sing along to the radio, and my hand rests on the stick shift, flying down the highway in fifth gear. I have twenty minutes of, what feels like open time, on my way to pick up the kids from horseback riding camp. They have enjoyed a week of horses, ponies, baby goats, tiny bunnies. I’ve endured a week of begging to bring tiny, furry, undeniably cute creatures home.    They almost convinced me. ALMOST. The default answer is: “not until the house is done.” Time is rushing past and it is hard to stop and take a moment to pause, and even harder to look back and reflect on where we have been. We move from day to day, week to week, month to month while also tackling project after project. It is hard to prioritize. It is hard to focus. Sometimes it feels like we are moving in circles.  It is suddenly summer, and not just summer but the middle of summer, almost the end of summer...

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.  ...

I arrive home, late at night, after having spent almost a week in the city of bridges. Pittsburgh is beautiful. Excitedly, Adam walks me through the house. While I was gone, he insulated interior walls (for sound reduction), HVAC ducting was installed, and the walls were sheetrocked. Instead of being excited, I panic,walking through the house noticing all the things that are wrong. - Framing is still missing here. - And here. - This doorway is too tall, too wide. - We forgot a dryer vent!! - THAT HOLE IN THE FLOOR IS IN THE WRONG SPOT. I lay awake too long and worry. Gorgeous reclaimed 10 inch wide fir planks from the now deconstructed Salvation Army, formerly located in downtown Missoula, are delivered by WasteLessWorks and Adam fastens them to the decks and porches. There are three!!  We deliberate on how to finish them and then decided to just use them the way they are: square bolt marks, paint stripes, burn mark and all. The view of the "Gre...

Tired is lodged between my shoulder blades.   I pick a shovel and one scoop   at a time close up the trench connecting the power from the shop to the shell of our house. Seven hours later I shower and drive Adam to the airport.  He is mostly out of town for two weeks and I have no option but to keep moving.  Every day starts and ends with an impossibly long to do list.    I am woken up Tuesday morning a semi load of insulation being dropped off at my curb.  After work an (unbelievably kind) neighbor and I lug each giant bag of rock wool into the house and pile some in every room - down stairs and up the stairs – until my arms no longer can hug the bags to my chest.   Wednesday night we do the same, but when I try to bear hug the first bag insulation to me I find I can’t carry a single one on my own.   As we round up the corner of the stairs the first time a flutter catches my eye.   An owl is trapped against ...