Busy Hands Homestead

I brush a cobweb from my hair and bag up remnants of old insulation bats.  They are damp from a week of rain and no roof.  I pull the trash bag behind me, through the shallow space, under what is left of the original house.  A giant spider scurries up a wooden post.  I pause to watch. Last Picture of the Old House!  After the frantic final boxing up of everything we own, the roof came off and the walls came down (courtesy of Heritage Timber ), and we relocated into 200 square feet (?) of a school bus.  It seems sudden, but years of planning and saving might just be reality. Decon in Process There is no going back now. We are a month and a half into our remodel/rebuild and the walls are going back up.  I dance around the a space that looked good on paper, and feels even better. The walls of the Laundry Room, open space of the dining room, viewed from the kitchen.   I'm wishing I had remembered to put on sunscreen. The t...

I braid one thin braid after the other and secure the ends in a rainbow of hair bands carefully selected and organized. The motions seem like right of passage and it is officially summer break. We are on the tail end of a whirlwind road trip, moving down the highway at moderate speed.  We took the converted school bus we are currently living all the way to Niagra-on-the-Lake and back.We are rolling along, somewhere between the east and west boundaries of South Dakota. We cooked dinner while the day darkened and the stars emerged in the sky. We drove and drove and drove as we put the jagged peaks of the rocky mountains behind us and the landscape became flat then then the plains grew to hills and mountains and water.  The lush green of a deciduous forest, ferns and flowers all around us.  Somewhere along the way our bus gained a name - meet Alice. The dense vegetation broken by ponds dotting the landscape, the intermittent water become vast a...

“I gave my home away today.” I'm hugging a stranger. She is crying and I'm trying really hard not to. In my hand is a rain spattered list of mobile homes that are delinquent on their property taxes. Everyone in this mobile home court received a six month eviction notice five and a half months ago, and I am attempting to figure out which homes on the list are still occupied, or planned on being moved, and can benefit from a community of strangers that raised $10,000 to keep folks in their homes. Folks who can leave, have left. The lots are a mix of occupied, empty, abandoned, trashed, and taken over by squatters. Her home is not on the list. Her mobile home, well maintained, loved and updated, is too old to move. Nine years as a owner of her own home are gone. Thirteen years working for the same employer and nothing is okay. She gave away her home. “I'm sorry.” I say. My personal, professional, and public office worlds have bee...

There is something that I love about being solidly in the winter months. Past is the anxiety about the coming cold, the lists of unfinished work, all the things we could have done but did not do. It is a new year full of dreams, and potential, and things yet to come. It is dark enough at 6:30 in the morning to see the earth's shadow cover the moon. Ivory glaces upward, takes in the moment, and crawls back into bed. Sylvan looks up and keeps looking. The cold creeps between bathrobes, and coats, and boots on bare feet as we stand looking at the sky. The early morning darkness gradually becomes lighter, the afternoons noticeably longer. Winter is an excuse to hunker down, to bend our heads close, sip warmth and gradually put the pieces together. Puddles form and ice sheets get smashed while waiting for the school bus. The surface of the road slowly appears and disappears on my walk to work. It snows, and it seems that ev...

Sylvan's blue and orange glove keeps slipping out of my knitted mitten. He and I wave to Ivory on the school bus, go down the street, and up and over the bridge. There is a skiff of snow on the ground, a hint of sunlight through the clouds, and the sound of birds chirping. Flocks of black birds morph across the sky, the morning light flashing off of their wing flaps, and for an instant they are foating glitter. Our hands slip and we switch sides. I can't remember what we talk about, but the kid walking next to me is happy and bubbly and is rattling on barely audible over the drone of trucks. It is hard to imagine that just half an hour earlier, he was screaming about breakfast and shoes and going to school in general. The snow and cold surprised me. I wasn't ready. Sylvan is bundled up in snow pants and bright orange sneakers. His sister's hand me down bogs I saved from last winter are still too big, and I haven...