Mudboarding

Our 'mudboarding' party was a busy one. There was way more food and beer than necessary, but we're doing a fine job of using it up before it goes bad. And who can stop the karate chop? Look out.

I was pretty scatter-brained over the weekend. It had been a long week of putting up insulation and making other preparations. I usually underestimate the time it takes to get things done, but with insulation I was exceptionally optimistic. Anyway thanks to everyone for coming and helping turn this place into a fine place to live.

Hauling in nearly 200 sheets of drywall was a feat in itself.



















So far we have sheetrock hung in a bedroom and a half, as well as in the mud room. Sheetrock is one of those brand names, like band-aid, that sometimes does a nicer job of describing the thing than the generic term.













This week is focused on outside work, though. We're preparing a place for my sister's wedding reception and since we're renting a mini-excavator to take out stumps for that there are a bunch of other things to do while it's here. I worked with it today. It's not cheap but worth a lot more than what you pay if you think of how hard it is to dig out a stump by hand or dig a ditch.

Insulation period

It's been a busy week leading up to this drywall party. We've had a lot of help, which keeps things light. The other day, when there were half a dozen people putting up insulation, Seamus asked his mother, "So, is this a insulation party?"


There is still a lot of insulation to put up, but the downstairs is pretty much ready for drywall. And upstairs a lot of the fussy parts are done, so I think we may get that done today.


I finally got the materials estimated on Wednesday and ordered them Thursday morning. We're expecting a truck Saturday morning around 9:00 I think, and it needs to be hand-loaded as I couldn't get a forklift truck at such late notice. So if you're coming Saturday and can make it there early-ish it would be appreciated.




Thanks Jim for the drywall hoist. I've never had the pleasure of using one of these, but so far I really like it.














The weather is supposed to be warm this weekend. I made a little path down to a bathing pool in the creek just upstream from our place. It might not actually be on our property, but it's real close.






Summer evening tacos with the bride and groom after much fiberglass and a swim, and before a hike up Oakytop to see the Big Bay fireworks. The fireworks were pretty far away and had some stiff competition from the moon over misty green mountains.





Nora and Jared have been staying out here for most of the week, bringing a wave of fun and energy to the project.

Graduation of a building

Yesterday the building inspector and the plumbing/mechanical inspector gave their approval of our house's bones and guts, respectively. Yesssss.

This means the next thing to do is insulate the place. We're using fiberglass because it's cheap and durable. Perhaps its greatest downfall is its tendency to leave glass needles in your flesh, lungs, and eyeballs. So you have to wear a lot of clothing, glasses and a respirator to keep it happy. Let's all wish for a July cold snap, eh?

The drywall party next weekend is still on. If drywall is not your thing, there is an elliptical stage to build down by the creek, an arched ceiling that needs wood, possibly a well project to put together, and tent spots that need to be leveled, among other outdoor things. Speaking of tents, camping is encouraged, as the Big Bay road gets longer at night. And bring an instrument if you have one to play, acoustic or electric. So far quite a few musicians have shown interest, so it'll be fun to see what comes together.

More details about the party will come as we get them worked out.

On Sunday the 17th you may consider leaving the site to walk a while at the Eagle Rock site. There is a ceremonial walk then and there, not a protest, with the goal of acknowledging that this is a sacred site. If you haven't been there, you have my word that this is a powerful place. The building inspector who stopped by yesterday had just been up at the mine site there and remarked that level of safety and cleanliness up there was far beyond anything he'd seen in his 18 years as a building inspector. I heard another account like this at one of the informational meetings. I wonder if that powerful presence there, highlighted by the people who have been calling attention to It there, is affecting the builders and engineers, nourishing their respect for the earth and the lives of the people who work there.

Anyway the walking ceremony starts around 10:00 and continues until sunset, with the goal of walking around the site (4 miles) three times. This is a solemn walk from one drum site to the next. This link may or may not work to a facebook page about the event.
More information is available at standfortheland.com.

We're going to need help this weekend, too, order to get insulation installed. It's both fussy and uncomfortable, but also very satisfying.

Who's afraid of the inspector?

Today we had the framing, plumbing, chimney stuff and electrical rough-in inspected. There were a few notes, but nothing serious! There are a couple plumbing fittings that are the wrong kind for their use, a question about whether you can have more than one woodstove on one chimney flue, and then this funny thing about 'combustion air.' When you build a modern house you're supposed to make it airtight. Then, since you're sending air out the chimney, you have to poke holes in your airtight box -to let air in.

It is slightly more intelligent than that, in that you can control where the cold air goes and put a damper on the hole that only opens when the house needs air, but it is still a little silly. Anyway it's an easy job, poking a hole or two (we actually already built one in, but it is only for the masonry stove.)

So a very short list before we can move on to insulation and wall boards. Yay!

Seeing lucky stars

The big news today is that Aya Jane is okay! She catapulted out of a hammock this morning and hit the ground head first. About an hour later she started feeling out of it and I told her to take a walk to clear her head. This was terrible advice but a walk in the woods is my standard medicine for her and usually is a perfect cure for listlessness or general loss of focus. I hadn't really heard about the hammock crash or if I did I didn't record it in my memory thinking it was no more than the usual tumble.

Thankfully she found her way back but still felt off. So she took a nap. When she got up an hour later she wasn't able to answer simple questions. She was mumbling, blankly staring, and unusually drowsy so we rushed down the 550 to the hospital where her condition worsened to the point where the ER Doctor said repeatedly, "squeeze my hand if you understand me." And she responded by raising her other hand.

She had a CT scan to be sure she wasn't bleeding badly and she wasn't. Whew, but she was still in and out of consciousness and not able to respond to simple questions. What is your name, where are you, etc. She would occasionally answer in complete jibberish.

I had been praying for a while, envisioning angel hands of golden light to clear the way of healing, but as she dozed there in the noisy hospital afternoon and we were left alone I held her hand and prayed a hail Mary silently. When I got the end of the prayer her mouth whispered the first comprehensible word in an hour or more, without opening her eyes, "amen."

The doctor ordered an MRI, which took a few hours to complete with all the waiting around in square rooms. During this time I watched our dear girl come back almost completely. By dinnertime we were home and she ate a small meal and read a few chapters to Moses at bedtime.

I've come to understand that this is sort of a normal thing that happens to people who get a blow to the head. I guess a crash of that magnitude is rarely life-threatening. I probably wouldn't have been so worried if I had just called upon the wisdom I gained from watching the Dukes of Hazzard all those years.

But it really does put things in perspective to see your loved ones so helpless. And what do you make of the Hail Mary story? I don't even think she knows that prayer all the way through, and besides I wasn't praying out loud.
I tell you the next world is not far away. It interlaces every living thing at all times. Dead things too I bet.







We've picking away at the to-do list that precedes the rough-in inspection. This is when you have the framing, plumbing, and electrical stuff inspected before it gets buried under insulation and the wall boards. We have yet to run wires to a box by the generator, and a couple minor framing tasks. I'm pretty excited for the next phase.

Speaking of which, if anyone's interested we're planning a work party for the weekend of July 16th. The main objective will be to hang drywall. There will also be outside work, including making tent spots for camping and other party preparations. We'll be camping out the weekend and I don't know what kind of music and dancing we'll put together, but so far a lot of musicians have shown interest in this party, so it may be a progressive jam time.















Mossy made himself a guitar, amp and mic on a stand out of the scrap pile. Seamus is playing the bottle-with-a-stick-in-it. The future of rock n roll is in good hands.

Full-Swing Spring

Leaves are popping out in lime green waves across the hillsides. We have been in a planning mode for a while, laying out a schedule that will allow us to move in this fall –this time for real! It involves a rough-in inspection within a week or two, a wedding and two work parties: a drywall party July 16th, and a porch party Labor Day weekend. It's nuts.

It's been busy since last writing. Aya Jane turned 13.







We have run wires all over the place. By the way, I have to express my gratitude to all the people who came out to help rough in the electrical. You can read how to do about anything on the internet or at the library, but when you learn by doing with the help of experienced leaders, things go so much smoother and happier and also faster.

Here's a nice trick Paul had to keep wires pulling smoothly: hanging up a spool of wire on a piece of pipe and some scraps of wood.











Much of the past couple weeks have been spent clearing a flat spot in advance of my sister Nora's wedding. It is a very fun motivation but the pressure is on to get grass started to be ready for an August gathering. If anyone out there is excited about this sort of work, we'd be happy to have you.


We slept on the floor in the new house these past two weekends. It is nice to make a little shift from work place to home place, but not that easy. It's far easier for me to obsess about the details of this place if I don't leave it. So I'm learning again how important it is to control my mental flow. I'm finding the need to step outside of the mental world and be a natural man whenever the planning begins to be a destructive force.


The road is nearly dried up. I look forward to being able to drive in easily, even in our two-wheel-drive truck. So far the bugs are not flying very much, but you can see them thriving in swamp pools and ditches. Hm.


So the to-do list before our rough-in inspection is as fathomable as a to-do list of unfamiliar projects can be. We're hoping to be through it by the end of next week. As busy as we are, we're still making a little time to get out to secret spots on Sundays.

April fools

The road out of the woods is exceptionally muddy this mud season, so we've been mostly walking in from the bridge, sometimes from the sand pit. Sometimes we try to make a run through the mud holes, especially if there are heavy things to haul. This is our neighbors' car that we passed in a surprise parking spot. Another neighbor has been pulling a trailer with a four-wheeler, serving as an open-air bus, a delightful ride if it's warm and you don't mind a little mud on your trousers. We now have about a foot of snow on top of the mud. It looks like it will be a while before we drive all the way in. You can't be too sure about things in Spring, however. So the plumbing rough-in is done! I checked the water lines with air and they've been holding about 60psi for about three weeks. That plumbing project was a different process from other building projects. It was a time of doing a little bit every day, and then one day you've done the last little bit. It's ironic that it was a less-fluid process than is landscaping or carpentry. After plumbing comes electrical, and a bunch of people have come out to make that come together, including Moses! It happens that a few of my friends who are experienced with electrical work also have had a little down time this past few weeks, and so the electrical rough-in is already nearly done. There are just a few more circuits (out of 19) to run wire to and then the service panel to organize. Then there is the solar set-up to figure out. I just have to give Kitty (the visiting dog) some praise for sitting on the stairs here while we worked and other dogs ran around. She did also eat a plate of bacon off of the counter that day, so don't let her get a big head.