Things That Bring Relief

There's the world's version. . .

And there's God's version . . .

Give the choice (I've tried 'em both), give me nature's version any day.

Here's to you little tick.  

Still miles to hoe before I sleep~

You're So Country If . . .

     You find this a fun way to spend your week (tick risks and all) . . .
     (Note: here are the last taken from the deconstruction site, before hauling old wood to its new site)

You're so creative if . . .
You can invision the new barn just from looking at these remains~

Here's to new life from old (and cherished) things . . .

Cause and Effect

           We laugh at commercials that grab us in the first 10 seconds with the fancy car or the “fix it” drug, followed by some fast talking announcer filling the remaining 20 with a litany of disclaimers about everything that might possibly go wrong…

            But despite said disclaimers, we write down the drug and long for the car just the same…(Madison Avenue knows us pretty well.)

            The good news about physical exhaustion (in my case thanks to a teeny, tiny tick so powerful as to render a full grown female worthless for a couple of days) is it gives one time to think. As I slowed down long enough to ponder life, and my own choices here of late involving farming and living more simply, this whole notion of cause and effect kept playing over and over in my head.

            Whether you like it or not, we live in a cause and effect world, with “cause” being those things we think about, wish for, long for, and “effect” being that thing that manifests in the physical world once the cause side of the equation has been properly addressed.

            To use the garden as analogy, “cause” would be the seed (i.e. that thing we plant, then water, then fertilize, then weed, giving proper time and space to) --the “effect” would be the resulting plant we see crop up in a matter of weeks, provided we’ve tended to the first half of this equation properly.

            Any farmer knows (and I am quickly learning) there is a necessary mixture of time and energy between cause and the effect that, depending on how you approach it, will make or break you. Try as you may to speed it up, nature goes at her own pace; you can’t rush her. Meanwhile, the rest of the world—the world the media would have us believe—turns a blind eye to this notion....even scoffs. We spend minimal time focusing on the cause of things, much preferring we jump to the effect, after all, that part’s far more fun.

Although we know crimes don’t get solved in an hour and pills don’t cure you in an instant, this notion of instant gratification still seeps incessantly into the subconscious soil of our minds, with the result being a rapidly growing disconnect with reality. 

Most everyone I know enjoys thinking about their dreams; some of us paste up pictures; others write them down. But when it comes to realistically approaching a dream, and what time it might take to reach it, we’ve been sold on unrealistic expectations, after which, there usually comes a crash. Why? Because cause and effect is not optional. It is law.

            Still we fast forward through the cause side of the equation, much preferring “effect” (as in “Let’s have it now!"), but nature doesn’t work that way, and neither does life. Yes, we can fake ourselves out…have the stuff we want “now” often with very little thought given to it. But one day, we wake up to mounting debt, mounting stuff, and mounting frustration as to how we got so overloaded, as if life was out to punish us, when in fact, we’ve been punishing ourselves all along.

I was talking with a Master Mind partner the other day (if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, Master Mind has to do with goal setting in groups of 2 or 3, as a matter of accountability and support). As we pulled out our respective journals to make notes for the upcoming month, I noticed he had created a space on his page for something I had not…

            My page had lines for dreams, goals and even achievements and accomplishments to check along the way so as to keep us motivated.

            On his, he had added “obstacles to remove”…defined as those pesky, not-so-fun tasks that are nowhere near as fun as goals, but left unattended can keep you from ever achieving yours.

            I had never thought about listing obstacles on my otherwise fun and creative “goal” page—After all, who likes to give energy to obstacles? But I had to agree, that at any given point in time, we could all point to something (usually several somethings) that we've been dreading...that thing we know won’t be fun—that perhaps keeps getting pushed further and further down the list. Just thinking about it makes you want to shop or eat chocolate or have a drink. And you can opt for that... until one day—BOOM. The brakes fail. The roof leaks. Our health gives out. The bank calls.

            We act surprised, but we shouldn't.  We had every warning sign, including our gut. But because we’ve become masters at avoiding the non-fun stuff, skipping ahead to the “effect” side of the equation, we pretended we were getting away with it. But in reality, cause and effect is law. Ask Einstein. You can’t short circuit it.

            Face it. We’re a love the dream/hate the discipline kinda culture. We love the house/ hate the maintenance. Want the car/hate the payments. We’ve convinced ourselves a winning lottery ticket will solve it all, despite repeated proof to the contrary. Somewhere along the way we started to equate the American dream with entitlement, forgetting that those who came here first in search of it, were some of the hardest working creatures to ever walk the planet. 

            And yet we love the Cool-aid. I dare say we're addicted. Seeping into our homes, into our psyches, is a repeated barrage of misinformation streaming at us constantly, suggesting we can override nature and collapse time, but it doesn't work that way.  Every ad, every sitcom, every movie, poses a problem, a bit of conflict and within a short window of time, a very tidy resolution wrapped up 30 seconds, 30 minutes or 2 hour increments. And while consciously we know “that’s just Hollywood”, subconsciously it’s affecting us, even altering us and the way we look at life. And like the frog in the pan of slowly heated water, by the time that water boils, it’ll be too late to jump.

            

Farming: Not a Single Person Sport

           It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me why farming families of old were such large families….And why summer vacations were set aside so that school kids could be at home to help with the gardens. (Yes, this was the original reason for our 9 month school year. And given precious few school kids are living a farming life these days, it is also why folks are considering year-round school. Personally, I’d rather have the kids here helping out if we could get ‘em to work that hard.)

            It only takes one day or two out of commission to remind you super quick that farming doesn’t take a vacation…it doesn’t allow a sick day. If you’re going to go for this peaceful life, you better have a good back and an even better immune system (both of which are lacking for me right now). If you don’t have either of these, you’d better have good neighbors and good friends.

            Of all the things I’m learning as I go, the one coming clearest to me the quickest is how much you need a village. (I’m one step ahead: we already have our idiot.) Between critters to feed, food to haul, rows to hoe, weeds to pull..it’s an endless cycle (usually enjoyable, except when you’re bugged out and exhausted or feeling the sheer overwhelm of what lies ahead).

            After 12 hours in a cold sweat, waking up once or twice to down more water and eventually fresh fruit, it was all I could do to get out of bed this morning, much get less critters fed. But I had no choice. Once accomplished (and thanks to quite a bit of caffeine, which I was trying to limit, but today was not the day) it was back to the doctor for me where they pulled 4 vials of blood to test it for every tick-borne disease known to man (or woman, as the case may be).

            In the meanwhile and as a safety precaution, they loaded me up with antibiotics and prescription anti-itch medicines, and I was given strict instructions not to take a hot bath or any kind of soak right now, nor to cover tick bites with anything that could lock in what might be its little tick head still in me…(like Neosporin). Instead, they spoke of a baking soda paste…anything to pull the toxic residue from the skin. You don’t want things to lodge and do more damage was the gist of the conversation.

            Sadly, I did not save the varied ticks I pulled off of me (so eager was I to crush them and flush them down my toilet once removed). But for those of you experiencing anything of the same, “Save your ticks!”  (Who knew?) The say size doesn’t matter, but shape and colored things on their backs will help. (Sadly, I wasn’t eager to get too acquainted with the little guys, so we’re stuck waiting on test results from blood work for now.)

            After today, however, I have a new incentive to simplify life in every way possible. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” which means for everything I intend, everything I do, everything I plant, everything I buy, I should be allowing an equal window of time and space for the resulting action that, by nature, will follow. Instead, I contend that the reason so many of us are on overload right now (please allow me to type this, even if I'm speaking only to myself), is that we’re so enthralled with the first half of this formula, the second half gets overlooked with no time allowed for it (says the girl staring at her stack of “not-so-fun” bills to pay and junk that’s accumulating in corners and crevices because I always think I need more than I do when I’m standing at the checkout…Never once thinking that the counter balance to this equation means I have all the same items already at home, in spades…cluttering drawers and corners).

Were it not for the help of a very dear friend, I’m not sure I’d have made it through the chores of this day (and my thanks for the extra time expended to give me a jump start on tomorrow)…But while I end this day with heart of gratitude and a body full of antibiotics, I likewise end it with a mind now open to new ideas on just how one goes about changing a lifestyle of so many lifelong habits that leave one in utter overwhelm at the end of the day.

            So I go to bed pondering a modern day share-cropping formula and/or community gardens and even communal living as a way to share the burdens as well as the bounty. Much as I adore my privacy…for writing, for thinking, for reflecting, there is another part of me that realizes there is no way one person can physically take this journey alone.

            As of this day, I am convinced, farming was never intended to be a one man sport.

A Bug's Life

           So the pictures we'll save for another day. This one ends early for a girl covered in whelps and insect bites. I’m not sure in times like these if Google doesn’t do us more harm than good. Symptomatically, I woke up with no energy and just couldn’t get a grasp on my day. I took two naps (with a doctor’s visit in between) and am heading to bed (before dark) still with no energy. (Yes, fatigue is one of the main symptoms of nearly every tick-infested disease. Can’t help but wonder…But I don’t feel flu-ish. More kinda “blue-ish” …It’s such an odd feeling not to have energy. I supposed I have taken that gift for granted and for this I am sorry. Days like today really put it in perspective, I gotta say.

            To be safe I started the steroids (which last time I did this, kept me awake for 23 out of 24 hours…for a full week. I got a lot of house cleaning done that week. I also gained 10 pounds in 10 days…I was eating all the time…hungry round the clock.)

            But that was a brown recluse. These are ticks. One’s venom is poisonous; the other carries diseases. (Good to know your bugs when you live in the country, cause Lord knows you’re gonna cross paths.)

            For now, we’re keeping an eye on things (when my eyes are open).

            For now, it's "Night. Night. Sleep Tight"  (And please God, don’t let there be any bedbugs on top of it all. Don’t think my body could take it.)

Making Old Things New Again...

            …is how I bought a church that is now my home ~

            …is how I start a barn, that someday will soon be someone else's...

            Nothing inspires me more than taking something old and creating something totally new out of it. I’m especially fond of finding something that once served one very useful, soulful purpose, that today, could take on a whole new life and meaning, if only someone would spearhead the project to “re-purposed” things for a whole new endeavor….

            Such is how I spent my holiday weekend.

            Pulling ticks off of me (literally as I write… as of this moment…this sentence, we’re at 8) the rest of my day, was MY kind of holiday. (Ok. Scratch 8.  Now 9.)

         Nothing thrills me more than sorting through a heap of past history (read: scrap heap to most, but to some, ”a life” all the while envisioning what could be created from the remnants of what someone else, in their day, spent their life crafting/saving/salvaging /collecting…
         I honor the energies of those whose lives were spent dreaming…be it barn-building, wood-working,  window-claiming, loft-attaching…a scrap to some is a blueprint to others…It's as if we spend our whole life accumulating (and resisting the urge to let anything go), only to eventually have some total stranger marveling at the way in which you took the time to tongue-in-groove a barn floor. (Must've been a neat and thoughtful guy. I was told he did it all by himself with no one there to help.)

            So as of this day, let the barn begin-- to be crafted from an old one being torn down as I write. (First step of this journey—finding such a barn. (Ok. Tick count now in double digits.) Second step (clearly, buy more "Off").

Though it was a tick-infested, spider-conscientious kinda day, the barn vision in my head and magazine pics plastered to a poster board behind my bathroom door were more than enough to pull me through the picky and sticky parts. The thought of my “barn-to-be" coming from woods once likewise visioned by a person starting his barn, some 60 years ago…well, not only was it a weathered look we were looking for, but more important, it was precisely the kind of energy I wanted to surround myself and my critters with going forward. (If you were blessed enough to grow up playing in barn lofts and swinging from tires tethered by a rope tossed across an oak branch,  you know what I'm talking about.)

            Tick diseases aside (Ok. 12…Please God, let this be all. The poison ivy has me itching enough already), this day was an amazing array of old woods, new dreams and a team of folks who (thank God) seriously knew what they were doing (once we stopped pulling ticks off each other like monkeys in a zoo)…

            Thanks to my real estate friend who made this day happen, I signed on to clear a lot, falling down barns and all…with remnants of wood and tin for my project in exchange for the work on another's. Yes, I wanted old, old wood (the older the better). (Tick count 13.) But at the end of the day, as I’m nearing the moment when my head hits a pillow, I have to say, it was a good one all in all, even though where it leads us, is a journey no one can anticipate at this point...(Anymore, I'm not so certain this isn't the best way to approach life.)         

               

             Should make for good pictures if nothing else.
             (I promise not to photograph the whelps.) 

              As they say in the biz...

             "Stay tuned."