Re-rooting and house hunting

Here are some photos for those of you trying to keep up with our latest adventures.


May I just interject that $5 for sending a 4 page (including cover page) fax from the library is insanely high, especially in light of the fact that we just paid twenty cents in late fees.





Luke and I have been celebrating. While we were in Boston, he applied at a company we love. His cousin and my sis-in-law, two of our favorite people, and the ones we were visiting in Mass, both work for the leader in fair trade coffee and foods, Equal Exchange. We were waiting to hear the results of his interviews and squirming in anticipation to find out whether or not we would be relocating for the position in West Bridgewater Mass. We were keeping it posi by focusing on the two wonderful outcomes: a. luke would have a sweet job with a cooperative company full of compassion, b. we could stay in wisconsin, perhaps continue looking for employment in Madison.



We were BLOWN away when our two wins (win/win) fused into win-win. Luke was offered a position with EE in Madison, WI. Although too good to be true, we thought long and hard about the ramifications of the decision. One job put us closer to family and friends on the east coast - Phineas! The other enabled us to continue forming our wisconsin identities, and put us just down the road from our current home base amidst 40 wonderful acres. Even better, after a trip through Illinois to show Luke some of my favorite people and places, it was so much more amazing to think of the opportunity to stay close to my roots.

So the search for the perfect rental house begins. We've looked at 8 houses in the last two days. The stunt can be summed up as followed:

1. scary-ish neighborhood, neighbors crashed car in the rental's yard, property mgmnt not so keen on gardens, possibly toobig, generally nasty
2. fell in love relative to previous nasty. just a little too cozy. awesome neighborhood.
3. this is the coolest house. too big for us, but the price is so tempting. organic raised bed already established. this house is for ego. giant, great colors. short bike ride from everything cool about madison. half block from botanical gardens.
4. this is the most offensive house i've ever smelled. smelly. smelly. icky. smelly. close to interstate. on busy highway. yuk. get me out of here.
5. this house is actually an apartment and doesn't allow pets. dud. doesn't even allow children. double dud. awesome view or lake mendota, though
6. even closer to the lake. this house is pure wow. cute lofted living space and master. awesome yard turns into lake. want, but not perfect.
7. an old school house remodeled. so freaking cute. on lots of land. just a little too far from the action.
8. i think this is our house. nothing wow! about it. practical in every way. awesome awesome old bar in basement, previously used as storage until my sewing machines escape and bring an explosion of my fabric stash with them.

so there we have it. will we keep looking or try to get #8? stay tuned!

a little ghost snuck out of my pumpkin at elisa and pat's pumpkin party. step one of the IL roots tour.

stoop kids. i.love.these.people.

Next we head to Urbana, lil poops in her old yard on Nevada st., we eat some Basil Thai, and we carry on to Peru.

After an incredible night of catching up with my high school bestie, Luke and i explore the haunted halls of st bede academy. autumn has convinced me to extend my eventual land search to kentucky.

How did my high school have an apiary and not offer me a course on this!?

Next on the agenda, i show Luke the best town in Illinois by a dam sight. we found a jungle creature while hiking my favorite spot between the river and my old neighborhood.

No matter how much cancer-causing dioxin is dumped here, I LOVE this river. I somehow love it even more.

We fly back home to the 40. Just like the sandhill cranes that favor here to any other nesting grounds.

We have been preparing for winter and our next southern destination, too.

this keeps our cabin cozy in the mean time.

How To Deliver Your Brother's Oversized Ikea Purchase:

If your brother offers you a $100 shopping spree at Ikea in exchange for buying and bringing home a sofa and ottoman, consider the vehicle before you start day dreaming about uber soft new bath towels.

If your relationship with your oldest brother is anything like mine, you don't know how to say "no." So here are a few easy(?) tips to enable a safe(?) delivery of a non-broken sofa.

Step 1: Make sure the boxes are not too large when picking them up from the ikea warehouse. Try to assess this before loading them all into the elevator.


Step 2: Take pride in your ability to lift heavy boxes onto your brother's vehicle. Even if putting said boxes onto the roof of the car elicits "Ooh"'s, "Ah"'s, and general snickering from customers with much flatter boxes and larger vehicles in which to transport them.

Step 3: Laugh (on the inside, to remain polite) at the bickering couples who are also experiencing difficulty fitting their (much smaller) purchases in their (much larger) vehicles. "I CAN'T BELIEVE that you left the GOLF CLUBS in the TRUNK!!!"

Step 4: If you are a woman, be happy that you are one of very few women helping her SO by lifting and jamming big boxes.

Step 5: Use as many straps, rope, and bungees as are at your disposal. When another customer comes out of ikea with disbelief at your attempt, take the extra strap that she offers you.



Step 6: Make a web of bungee... a bungee matrix, if you will, to ensure things won't fly out of your trunk. I think the web helps, right?

Step 7: Drive slowly. Don't slam on the breaks.



Step 8: Unpack and assemble while your nephew discovers his new fort.



Mission Accomplished, well done team!

*Bonus Step* : If you have a job interview the following day, mention your accomplishment when asked to name a recent challenge and how you approached it.

Why did we come to Boston, again?

Luke and I found ourselves asking this question yesterday afternoon. Not because there was any question of the worth of our visit - it has been a total blast! - but rather because our priorities and top objectives have been constantly morphing since arrival. Peel wall paper, hang out w/ nephew, paint, meet cool friends of bro, babysit, plaster the walls!, dance party, apply for job?!, move, babysit, play, dance, repeat. Luke had the fortunate experience of interviewing with Equal Exchange, one of my favorite companies for the last decade due to the fact that my sister-in-law, whom we have been visiting for the last 3 weeks, has been spreading the good word of fair trade and organic products since my adolescence. The interviewing process, combined with the pure fun of hanging with family, had become this temptation keeping us in Boston longer and longer than expected.

Cute nephews aside, there's nothing like city livin' to make you really, really miss the forest. Here are some more photos from our pre-trip hikes around WI, and stop at the all-powerful niagara falls.

sustaina bull thistle

home is where the heart is ... an important realization for those of us growing tired of a transient lifestyle

I aimed my camera at a nest just above my head, in attempts of seeing some eggs. i was startled and ran away quickly upon finding some hatching in progress!


Lil's legs fail to work some days, yet romp around as if she were still a pup on others. They decided to stop working the day we traveled through Canada, thus leaving us no option but to carry here all around Niagara Falls. In response to my fear that she would never walk again, I considered throwing her off the edge, thus making for a better way to go than being injected in a cold, sterile vets office. Luckily this joke didn't become a reality, and she started walking again a few days later. Perhaps her stiffness was just in response to the previous day of wild play with Luke's nieces and nephews. Moral of the story: don't even think about throwing your dog over a grandiose waterfall... you will feel like a monster after the fact, once she rebounds.

Do do headstands instead.


I was somewhat shocked to pay to camp in what would constitute "the great outdoors" or "greenspace" for some, when in reality the location was an over manicured lawn that was mowed dangerously close to Lake Ontario. We did get a view of Toronto across the lake, my favorite way to see a city, soft, muted, made smaller by its distance, nothing but a big city dream on the horizon.

I finally made it to Phineas! On this night I played the role of world's WORST aunt by scaring him stiff in a halloween store. He seemed to rebound into high spirits immediately, thus leading everyone to accuse me of helping Phinney create his very first "dark place" buried deep within his subconscious. ouch.
A few hours later we were out to dinner, and I pulled out my camera, asking him to "Smile!" He stopped what he was doing, cocked his head and fashioned this face. !!! Lyns tells me this if the first time he ever responded with an intentional smile, and we haven't been able to get him to do it since.

Later, Finn had a doctor's apt, so Tybor took him out to celebrate afterward with his first baseball helmet sundae. Lil received her official Boston (red sox) Terrier anointing.

Stay tuned for some how-to's.

<3 snakes

Baweston

Luke and I spontaneously hit the road the day after teaching camp across the street. We had a blast with 100 7th graders, celebrated a great woman's birthday a tad early, and kept on driving until we hit the coast.

Not all of my photos have loaded, but here are a few from a hike we took in Wisconsin before we left and on one of our travel stops at the awe-inspiring Niagara Falls.

Don't be a Stranger.

Thank you for the emails and comments in response to my strange inability to balance for 36 hours or so.

Luckily, the sensation of spinning dissipated after some rest and relaxation. While I am taking the whole experience very seriously, I am incredibly relieved that it seems to have been a shorter term loss of balance, most likely due to the ups & downs of the fast pace at the prairie nursery.

Speaking of the nursery, tomorrow is my last day - wah hoo! Summer vacation can finally begin! I have a lot to try to jam into these last few weeks of somewhat longer daylight - plant and mushroom identification, cupcake baking, knitting, new-lake paddling, enjoying the fact that Lil can walk again!

Anyhow, just wanted to let those dear and less near know that I wasn't more seriously injured as far as the semi-circular ear canals go. In fact, the new cool thing to do around here is climb up on the roof of the garage and watch the birds from within the trees. The things you learn that you love while trying to repair chimneys, I tell ya!

How to revive that gross old sink that was covered in mouse pee!

1. Rip out the gross, cracked sink.

2. Wash it... think about whether or not you really need it for anything else.

3. Let is sit outside and get covered in leaves because you're too busy with other things.


4. Find a sledge hammer.

5. Put on your safety gear.



6. Go Wild!

7. Arrange pieces of broken sink around freshly planted garden of your desire.

8. Enjoy!

(I chose stone crop. It is already stretching out and growing to cover the rough edges.)

Spinning Spinning Spinning...

I have vertigo. This is not good. I have never had this sensation before. I am afraid to walk near anything fragile.

After talking to Jules, and hearing that he had vertigo for 6 months before having a procedure to make it stop that included quickly shoving the head, vibrating things behind the ear, sitting upright with a neck brace for 24 hours straight, and an exercise regime that made him puke... I am more than a little concerned.

I've read there are also more generic forms of vertigo that can go away in a few days - fingers crossed. These can be caused from being away at sea or on a turbulent plane (being away at sky?). I have come to blame yesterday as the cause of today's dizziness. We were "cutting back" at work, which means making the tall plants shorter so they use less water. Our cutting back machine is a glorified electric lawn mower on stilts. Literally a lawn mower. We set up our line of rollers (that are in heavy need of repair due to rusty, unspinning wheels) and shove trays of plants underneath the lawn mower. We did this on Wednesday, and it was fine. I like working with my friends and although the noise of the mower made a tad irritable when combined with the heat of working in a hoop house on a sunny day, I simply vowed to wear ear plugs the next day. No use frying my ears just a week before layoff, right?

Well yesterday I wore the ear plugs, but my supervisor seemed irritated when I could not hear her, so I began taking at least one plug in an out between rounds of cutting back. I could tell the pressures in my ears were strange, but this always happens when you wear ear plugs, right? Well combine this with bending down and bouncing back up to pick up the tall plants and set down the short ones = problem. I didn't even notice my dizziness as I proceded to do this for 8 hours. My friend Beth seemed to notice something odd, as she told me my ear plugs were putting my to sleep, as I'd get a tad wobbly when I stopped working to pull a weed here and there. It is hard to attribute wooziness to one cause after an exhausting day. I was just proud that my legs and back weren't aching after all the bending. One the drive home, I thought my blood sugar was low, as I was having a hard time focusing on the road. I got home as safetly as I could, at a slow speed.

Later in the evening I was laying on Luke as he read to me a pickle recipe he wanted to try. (Beth and her husband had sent me home with bags of food from their awesome garden, including cucumbers just begging to be pickled.) When my head was tilted to lie on the couch, I first noticed something was really wrong. This did not stop the pickle extravaganza, as we had a 2 gallon crock to fill.

Bed time was a nightmare. The whole cabin was really spinning. Luckily, eight hours in a hoop house makes me tired enough to catch Z's quickly. When I got up to use the bucket (humanure in da houz!!) the transition to standing was so rough that I was falling into walls and chairs. (I can normally make this trip easily with the lights off, but last night, even with the lights on, it felt like a wave coming over me once I started walking.)

Things have been more of the same today. Luke wouldn't let me go to work, which was smart and I appreciate that I have someone making those decisions for me - as it's hard enough thinking about leaving my friends when I finish up there next week, let alone hiking up the hill to get to the phone to call in (Luke did this for me, is there some sort of award for which I can nominate him?)
So if you aren't overwhelmed with the sensation of falling or spinning whereever you are, enjoy it and make good use of your sense of balance by playing hopscotch for the both of us.

Enjoy some random photos, sorry I haven't been taking more!:

Our favorite chair, aka. Doggie Steps (this is how Lil gets on the bed under the influence of acupuncture she can walk again!) As a back story, Lil has been trying to get along despite an injured arm all summer. The vet had her try everything from pain meds to stereoids. While these releived the pain, she eventually ended up much worse and one day woke up unable to move 3 of her legs! We were carrying her everywhere. We tried acupuncture as a last resort and it brought our dog back!! We can't decide whether to call her Angel Lily or Zombie Lily, so we just call her Zombie Angel.

Steam coming off the river in the evening. Almost as beautiful as in the morning.


Another great garage sale find:
Unfortunately we had to pass this one up, due to the fact that a Rottie ripped lil's intestines out when she was a pup, hence leading her to fight everyone she sees.

Hoop houses, sweet hoop houses. P-R-A-I-R-I-E I love plants from the prairie!

It doesn't matter if you live in the poorest county in the state... the fair is still destined to feature such gems as this Jesus bowling pin 4-H project.


A rainbow on our trip to the UP reminded us of Fiona. We went up for the annual family get together, but more importantly so Luke could prove to me that the Upper Peninsula does infact experience summer. We went in late July and the highs were in the mid-60's. Achem.... can ones definition of summer really vary so much? I mean.. aren't they missing out on those sticky, sleepless summer nights of central Illinois humidity?

Luke took this shot in the kitchen as we were moving in. That's right, green floors, purple ceiling and half wall here where the pineapple wallpaper was ripped. Again, thanks to the Sandberg's (friends in the UP) for the vintage stove (for our period specific cabin), and plaid chair and couch.

One perk of work, you know.. aside from the vertigo (some people pay good money to get EFed up enough to watch the room spin), is when we cut back by hand. One weekend I had the honor of trimming some echinacea and new jersey tea. I used these old screens I picked up at the dump (with the intent to repair other screens)... they have found better use helping us dry herbs for tea.

Most importantly of all... the social event of the season... MY BESTFRIEND GOT MARRIED! I can't even begin to describe the festivities whilst doing them justice. Let me just say that Elisa and Pat got hitched in a barn (remodeled and still beautiful). I have never cried and danced so much at a wedding. Elisa and Pat had asked me to be part of the ceremony by speaking on the topic of friendship. I racked my brain for months in hopes of finding within the folds of my brain the perfect words of wisdom. When I came to terms with the fact that I did not have the perfect words to inspire awe and memories of past friendship within everyone in attendance, I opted for an alternate presentation. I crafted a childrens book (Elisa and Pat are the coolest school librarians and childrens book afficionados around). I even illustrated the good times ranging from Pat's imaginary friends from childhood to the time Elisa, Mikey, and I invented a game called Swinkie Ball that the Disney Channel wanted us to sign over the rights to. They served vegan cake and too much specialty pop for those of us who are sensative to sugar. I luckily rebounded from my sugar crash just long enough to dance to nearly every song on the dance floor (when else are you going to have the opportunity to listen to your favorite ska covers on a legit dance floor?). E & P also had a funtastic bluegrass band. But it didn't stop there. Luke and I topped off the festivities (the wedding that we wish we could have thrown) by a quick swim back at E & P's hotel followed by bowling with the after party! Now if only we could find the perfect time to schedule our much too belated bachelorette party at Noah's Ark Water Park.

Much Love!
Rach

PS. If it hasn't yet been documented here - we're using the hand pump and composting our humanure! I haven't been spending enough time on the acreage, but love even just catching my breath at the end of a hectic day by watching the bats catch the 'squitos above my head at the end of the pier.