1…2….5….7..8..TEN

The move is on! David is resigning at the end of the year and we are not renewing the lease. Come this fall we’ll either be in New England or living in a moving truck stuck in Eau Claire WI. We shall see, as David says.
Everyone has a list of things they hate, divorce, murder, watching nudity dances and the like. Close to the top of my list is moving. Moving is a pain in my ass, all the packing and lugging boxes and unpacking and lugging piles of empty boxes. I have been in this place since 2005, seven years!! This was supposed to be my temporary place until David and I either decided to get a place together or I would get something more permanent. Instead, a couple months later David moved in with me and there we are.
Now we are moving to something more permanent. Details about chickens and acreage and permaculture and cob houses will be shared later. Right now I am just wienering around.
We’re in the ‘sort and toss or donate or recycle or scream your fool head off when a desiccated centipede falls out of a project basket you forgot about 3 years ago’. I went through my yarn stash and blasted out anything that didn’t have a good plan in place (or was worth keeping). I have now sent 4 kitchen size trash bags of yarn, just the yarn! to the thrift store and still, STILL all the containers are full of yarn. My house is a damned yarn tardis (your mom is a tardis, bigger on the inside).
Also, the only thing I hate more than moving or packing or letting Chester practice home dentistry on me is garage sales. I hate having garage sales, hate them with all my soul. I’m donating everything because I do not want to spend my time carpdicking around over a nickle. It’s all donated and it’s all going. Incidentally, if you are in the twin cities area and would like a free tv, dvd player, 55 gallon aquarium with ALL the peripherals, and possibly a portable dishwasher that you hook up to the sink, let me know. They’re yours if you get them out.
But, for all the complaining there is a goodness. This is an awesome opportunity for us, a way to really change things. If it gets messed up we’ll deal with it. I’m worried about leaving my friends and family here, especially the lovely niece, Viivi, but we can travel back and forth to visit and also, I have friends and family all over this country and anywhere I move will put me close to someone. So, there it is! We’ve got no choice but to be mobile by the end of summer and we may as well head east.

oh right, a thing happened

IMG_5985

I went to Louisiana! On the way home I met an elephant.
I have much to write but it’s been exceedingly difficult to do all the things required to make a post, like form complete sentences, write the sentences, formulate coherent thoughts, type, breathe…
I probably need to take my welbutrin for a few days, it’s like ritalin for the slow people.
Also, I am still the queen of the homemade ice cream sandwich!

IMG_5968

HI HI HI HI!!!!!! Remember me? CHESTER?!

Hi hi hi!!! HI!! OH my god HI!!! Okay
HI
HI
The lady says the thing that is “chester you put the crumbs of potato chips on the thing that is the computer!!” and then she does the thing that is hide the computer from me! This is a thing that is true and also a thing that makes sadnesses for Chester (me).
But my name is Chester and that is a thing that is true and also a thing that is true is that I found the computer and I can say the things that are HI HI HI HIHIHI
HI
Okay! Oh my god! The thing that was true is that the lady went to a place that was not the place where we live and the man went there and also
DO YOU KNOW WHAT???
I went to the place that is not the place we live and so did Maddie (but maddie did it in a dumb way!)
We went to a place that was Madeline Island! This is a truthfulness. We had to ride ride ride ride ride in the car and eat cheese and pringles and go on a boat.
OH MY GOD! do you know what? We went on a crazy boat that was also a place for the car to go! It was INSANE!!! but also we got to eat more cheese so that is good!
And we got to go to a place that had SO MUCH GRASS! I LOVE GRASS!!! When there is the thing that is grass you can do the thing that is eat it or do peewee on it or go RUN RUN RUN RUN on it or do a laydown on it. The grass was so much! it was everywhere and also some trees and some people! and the things that are the things that are geese! that is TRUE!!!!

  • ha ha ha ha
  • I got to say BARK BARK BARK at Matt! I said the thing to Matt that was “MY NAME IS CHESTER AND YOUR NAME IS MATT AND MATT IS NOT CHESTER SO YOU GO AWAY!!!
  • HA HA HA HA I did that!
  • I said that to the people that were not matt too!! and it made me laugh! and I would tell maddie about it and she would say “IS THE LADY SAFE??!! LADY!! SAFETY!!!”
  • Maddie is doofy
  • oh my god!
  • DO YOU KNOW WhAT???
  • GUESS WHAT I GOT TO EAT
  • It was so delicious it was as delicious as a thing that is a snacktreat!
  • GOOSEPOOP
  • O MY GOD!!! OKAY! okay! hi! HI! My name is Chester and the thing that I ate was the thing that was goose poop!
  • HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!
  • hi

and I got to do the thing that was go on a canoe! but the car did not go on the canoe only me and the man went on the canoe. No car. That is a thing. No cars on canoes. I know this. I know so much! MY NAME IS CHESTER.
And I got to go RUN RUN RUN and one time I went on a canoe and the lady and Maddie stayed at the place where the canoe left and when I came back do you know WHAT??? DO YOU???? Maddie had the thing that was a friend!
I KNOW!
Can you believe it? A FRIEND!!! Maddie was doing the thing that was RUN RUN RUN with a dog that was not me and she said the thing to me that was that the dog that was her friend was like me (CHESTER) but that’s crazy! Because I am Chester and that dog was not Chester! And I am very handsome and smart and strong and that dog was only okay, he was not me!
But he was fun! because he liked to go RUN RUN RUN RUN and so I got to go RUN RUN RUN with him and we did a thing that was go in water and also jump and Maddie knocked me down and then do you know what??
DO YOU KNOW WHAT???
I told that dog my joke about how the man does the thing that is pick up my poop and the dog did the thing that was LAUGH! I tell the funny jokes! And then I told him about the fat squirrels that yell at me and want me to do the thing that is give them nuts but I don’t have nuts and they don’t know! and he thought that was SO FUNNY!
but Maddie didn’t. She doesn’t understand the squirrels. I am chester and the thing that I know is squirrels!
OH!!! and there were littles there at the place that was not where we live! LITTLES!! They were people kind of littles and not dog kind of littles! and one of the littles said the that was “SCAREDNESSES!!!!” and he made loud noises and a thing that I know is that littles know all about scarednesses! and so if a little is yelling about scarednesses then I will do the thing that is also have scarednesses!! and the little was yelling scarednesses and I was running around with scarednesses and the people were saying “hey! hey! settle down! is just a dog!”
Just a dog?
What?
What dog?
And then I knew the thing that was true! the little had scarednesses of me!!
THAT’S SO MUCH CRAZINESS!!! I am Chester! But one of the littles did not have scarednesses and he came up and touched me and petted me and the lady said a thing that was true, she said “good boy, Chester!”
I am a good boy!
OH!!! and I got to do a thing that was eat frosting!

The times they were beautiful

We returned safe and sound and exhausted from our trip to Madeline Island. It was absolutely beautiful, it really was. There are a million things to write about and I’ll get to them, hopefully! So let’s do bullet points!

  • First and foremost, the wedding was beautiful and simple. Only close family, very small ceremony, no big planning. A lot of specifics weren’t even figured out until a few hours before the ceremony. I love that. I’ve really come to appreciate simplicity in these sorts of things. Writing the advice column and watching what my sister went through with her wedding sort of kills the fantasy about weddings.
    • Mary-Alice could not have been more lovely in her wedding dress. She was able to use her mother’s wedding dress (rescued and rehabbed post-Katrina), cut to a classic tea-length. The addition of simple pearls and mary-janes and you could have wept seeing it.
    • There were 16 people involved (including the bride and groom), so we all got to pair up and be in the processional. David walked his mom up the aisle and I got to walk with Matt’s (insanely adorable) little nephew!
    • Mary-Alice had asked us to hum the Wedding March as her father walked her up the aisle. Instead, it was decided that we would surprise her and sing “You Are My Sunshine” instead. The look on her face was priceless.
    • In sum, the whole event focused not on spectacle or drama, but on the very core of the matter: two people who love each other very much coming forward and entering into a public contract of obligation. Two people focused only on each other, basking only in the love of family.
  • The dogs, bless their retarded hearts, wore themselves out running all week. The house that Mary-Alice rented for the week was huge (comfortably holding all 16 of us), on a giant piece of land and allowed dogs! I’m not sure she knows how much I appreciate that I got to bring the doofuses with me on this trip. For whatever stress they may cause in the moment, they are always such a huge comfort to me.
  • The house we wanted to buy!!! It’s a bust. The inspection was on Wednesday, David had to come back into town for some work things and was able to be there for the inspection. We knew there was going to be some work necessary for the house, water damage and such. The assumption was that since the phrase “newer roof” was being bandied about as a selling point, then the water damage would be from the time before the “newer roof”. This assumption was incorrect. In fact, our assumption that “newer roof” would imply that the house had something that functioned as a covering for the building was also wrong. Apparently, the phrase “newer roof” means “a shoddy piece of shit installed by disreputable asspipes who thought nothing of scamming an old man out of his money and leaving him with something on the top of his house that channeled water directly into the structure for years to come”. There is nothing about this roof that was installed correctly, not the materials, not the technique, nothing. As a result the house requires more than any regular buyer could possibly put into it. I’m not sure if I’m more pissed at the city inspectors for not finding this or at the conservators of the owner’s estate for not putting forth the effort where he could not. I don’t blame the owner, it’s obvious he’s in no position to be dealing with this. Knowing that we are the second potential buyers to have sunk multiple hundreds of dollars into an inspector to find out this information makes me question the integrity of the entire deal. At what point is it no longer ethical for the realtor or conservators to not disclose the information about the roof? Certainly it is not a lie that the roof is “newer”, but that roof is a detriment to that property. It is continually causing damage to the house such that it was our inspector’s opinion that there was so much damage to the outer structure that there was no real recourse but to tear down the house and rebuild.
    But, I guess this is where we pull our pants up and move forward and keep looking. It’s really frustrating, but I maintain that in home buying you must always be prepared to walk away.
  • The real sadness is that this was a house that we both liked equally. We have each seen houses that we have liked but the other was unimpressed by (do I love the mid-century rambler? oh yes I do! does he? not so much.)
  • Being on Madeline island re-awoke a little spark in me. There’s a part of me that wants to buy an old farmhouse somewhere near a crafts or artists community. Someplace where it’s half hippie artist and half flanneled ambiguously lesbian with a few dogs and a house that has a great view and some problems in the winter and a no-nonsense haircut and wide hips and artsy sensibility and raspberries in the backyard and David climbing trees somewhere. Somewhere like…Vermont…
  • On the drive home we hit some road construction on I-35, north of the cities in the “Save the Baby Humans” corridor (these exist everywhere approximately 100 miles outside of any larger city on the interstates where the billboard space becomes a bit cheaper). I got nothing against the pro-life message per se, but I am a deeply cynical human being and sitting there for 40 minutes seeing billboard after billboard touting “God’s Handiwork” and “God’s Greater Plan” and “I had my genes BEFORE I was born” made me wonder why they never showed pictures of babies with anencephaly or harlequin ichthiosis, are these not also part of the plan? Examples of the handiwork? Someday they will invent a pill for my brand of cynicism and the world will be a calmer place.
  • I was greatly saddened by the passing of Senator Kennedy this past week. He truly was one of the last great fighters for equal rights for all. As much as I appreciate Obama, he is no Ted Kennedy, that’s for sure. For all that would spit the venom of his faults and mistakes so haughtily as he passed, I would counter with this article. I know of few others who have fought so hard to give a voice to those who had so little. He was not one that fought to oppress many while hiding secret affairs (ahem, Mr. Sanford, Mr. Craig, Mr. Ensign, Mr. Foley and so on and so on).
  • Another passing that surprised and saddened me was that of Ms Sheila Lukins. She was second only to Julia Child in my book. In fact, she saw the banner Julia Child was carrying and took it one step further. Fine french cuisine was, in fact, accessible and attainable for the home cook but she told us to not forget Morocco and Thailand, cumin and fish sauce, she truly was a pioneer for expanding our meat and potato palates beyond the borders of midwest and out into the greater world. I have owned a couple of her Silver Palate cookbooks and in the mid-nineties when I was coming into my own in the kitchen I learned so much from them. She was part of the celebri-chef culture back when it meant knowledge and artistry, not stringing together whatever current hip foodie culture terms are popular and face humping a camera to the delight of the pre-menopausal (I’m looking at you Emeril and at you, Bobby Flay).
  • I got nothing else right now. David is back to work today. This week I will be sorting out my head and getting myself back on a regular schedule. I hope to write more about the issues of coming off Effexor and the wall I hit this summer. I also need to focus more on my fiber production and get more yarns and rovings out there, as well as finish up the new website for it all. Oh, and Chester has a few opinions to share with y’all.
  • Unrelated pet peeve: it’s spelled “voilà” and not “wallah”

ps about 2 weeks ago the banner at the top of my website went from being the same shade of pink as the sides to being a different shade of pink. Can other people see this? I’ve changed nothing on the site. Any ideas from the peanut gallery?

quicklike

1. my laptop did NOT DIE!!! It was the airport card. Awesome? YEAH! I’m tethered to an ethernet cable until I get a new card, but that’s fine. My laptop lives! Despite all the abuses, it lives!
2. made it to and from Thanksgiving in Missouri despite route confusion, bad weather and getting pulled over 4 times in one night. State trooper #4 totally apologized to us! Funny!
3. Dramamine was sent from the moon as a gift to me to use on Chester. Unfortunately, that dog is like a fucking reverse alligator! He’s not letting you stick anything in his mouth and he will clamp those teeth down and not open them. What the fuck, Chester?
4. I slept a lot today.
5. Maddie lost a lot of weight on this trip. She does not do well with stress. We’ll get the pounds back on her.
happy happy y’all
I’m going back to bed.