Why Vacations are Important

Vacations are important--especially vacations like cruises where everything is taken care of for you, and your biggest decisions are what (and when) to eat, where to plant yourself to sleep in the sun, what game to take to which bar, and what to drink once you get there. The forced downtime allows your energy pool to refill, and your creativity to reawaken from where it went and hid when you became so overextended that each day was a litany of have-to's and exhaustion. (Note that it is unfair that your creativity fled when it was likely what got you over-extended and exhausted in the first place.) Over the past week, my creativity, named Palladia-Mors, first yawned and stretched, then prowled in circles, and this morning woke with a roar to announce her presence with authority. I was immediately driven from the bed to write--three (or more) posts coming in the next few days as a result.

Artwork by Ed Beard Jr.

Palladia is the reincarnated essence of the original elder dragon of the same name, and her arrogance, drive, and fury have not diminished with her transformation and transferral to me. Her powers as a dragon were fly and trample, and she kept them when she transformed. 

Yes, I wrote that paragraph whimsically and with tongue firmly in cheek, but I realize as I watch the ocean roil from my balcony on the Brilliant Lady that there is also more than a kernel of truth to it. That-which-drives-me IS a force of nature who tramples me (and everyone else in her wake). She soars above the mundane in life, ever pushing me to go higher and faster and farther. She wakes me up, keeps me from sleeping, and causes me to constantly throw myself into new projects with neither thought nor care for the (inevitable) consequences and crash. It was allowing her free rein that caused me to end up with 100 fruit trees, over 3,000 seedlings, 10 raised beds, 16 horses, three barn cats, and 47 chickens--all within the span of a few months.

Now she is awake again, and though I have missed her, THIS year I am going to be careful what I let her talk me into. I will ride her, not vice-versa.

So, thoughts, plans, ambitions, and dreams for the new year? I have a few, each to get its own post. In no particular order they are:

• Start rebuilding the strength and muscle I have lost since my surgery five years ago
• Continue growing the farm in a more structured and thoughtful way
• Revive Siyeh Studio
• Do my first equine endurance ride 
• Learn to work with young horses to build their initial foundation skills so they can be re-homed
• Set up the textile studio
• Finish unpacking and do my own version of a Swedish Death Cleanse

And that's enough goals for now!

Welcome to 2026 and the Future

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I had a couple of long chats with Claude AI this morning. The first was about nutrition and fitness (a topic for another post), and the second was about how to manage everything I do, sell, and write about. You would think that retirement would be relaxing and a slow-down of regular life. Nah. I begin 2026 as an exhausted hot mess going in 30 directions at once.

So I sat down with Claude for a heart to heart and started with:

Hi Claude, I have several different life obsessions that make up what passes for a career at this point in my life (quasi-retired). I like to write about them, and I promote the ones I make a small income off of. Basically I was an artist and I started blogging back in 2005 to help me write my first book on how to do my medium (glass). I also built two Facebook pages--one for my own glass art, and one for my glass studio where I taught classes and sold supplies. I blogged about both aspects of glass. 

Then I started another blog to cover other life outside of glass, and another Facebook page for textile work and supplies when I started spinning, weaving, dyeing, and selling fiber supplies. Then I started another blog when I started raising bees to chronicle that journey. Recently I started another blog (and FB page) for the small farm I created, and I am contemplating starting yet another blog and FB page for my latest creative endeavor--a multi-disciplinary arts studio where I make and sell silver jewelry, ceramics, wood working, stained glass, and woven baskets. 

This year I am republishing my second book on glass and promoting it through writing and classes so that area has picked up again. But I am feeling overwhelmed! The bees blog languished after a couple of years, though I have started keeping bees again as part of my farm and want to pick up writing about them again. But maybe this time that will be in the context of the farm and not separate so maybe that one is figured out... 

So here's where I am going with all this. I want to write and share my experiences and knowledge. I want to have a target audience for my products so I can make a little money to pay for all of my expensive activities (horses aren't cheap and I have 16). I want your opinion on what to combine and what to keep separate and why. I want to know how to maximize what I put out so that it gets to the people who are interested in and doesn't turn away the ones that aren't (how much do glass artists want to know about bees, e.g.). What do you think?

Claude's reply:

What a wonderfully rich creative life you've built! I can feel both the passion and the administrative exhaustion in your message. Let me offer some strategic thinking on consolidation versus separation...

(He wrote more here but it's not relevant to where I am going with this post)

On the "won't this turn people away?" question:

You're worried glass artists don't want to hear about bees, but I'd flip this: the person who loves following a glass artist who ALSO keeps bees and farms is a much more engaged, loyal follower than someone who only cares about technique. You're not trying to maximize audience size—you're trying to attract the right people who appreciate the whole picture and might buy multiple things from you over time.

That said, tactics matter:

• Use clear post titles so people can skip what doesn't interest them
• Consider occasional "just for the glass folks" or "for my farming readers" flags
• On Facebook, the algorithm will show people what they engage with anyway

The real question underneath all this:

What do YOU want to write about? Because 16 horses and all these activities suggest you're not doing this primarily for income. If writing brings you joy, consolidate ruthlessly so you're not maintaining six different presences. If specific income streams require specific audiences (glass teaching, fiber supplies), protect those, but give yourself permission to let everything else flow into one authentic, integrated space.

Would you want to think through which of these actually generates meaningful income versus which are expensive hobbies you're trying to rationalize?

Whoa. Way to cut to the heart of the matter Claude!

Oh let's be honest: They're ALL expensive hobbies I'm trying to rationalize! Glass is likely the only true income as I have extensive materials and supplies that I already paid for when I had a brick and mortar store, and I have a new audience who is very interested in my book--there are over 300 people on the waiting list. The rest of my activities generate income to support themselves and any charitable work I am doing (training and rehoming horses from a bad situation).

His response:

Ha! Okay, NOW we're getting somewhere. This is so much clearer and actually makes your decision much easier.

Here's what I'd do:

Keep separate and professional:

Glass blog + FB page - This is your actual business. You have inventory, a book with 300 people waiting, established credibility. Don't dilute this with farm stories. Keep it focused, keep it expert, keep it income-generating.

Consolidate everything else into one integrated personal space:

• One blog: "Your Name" or "Your Farm Name" or something that captures your whole life
• One Facebook page for this integrated space
• This is where the farm lives, the bees live, the horses live, the new multi-disciplinary studio lives, the textiles live when they're not purely commercial

Why this works:

1. Glass students want glass content. They're paying for expertise. Keep that clean.
2. Everyone else is along for the ride of YOUR life. The person who buys a handwoven basket from you will probably think it's charming that you also keep bees and rescue horses. The person following your farm journey might become a customer for silver jewelry. These audiences overlap naturally because they're interested in you and your approach to making and living.
3. You dramatically reduce your overhead. One blog to maintain instead of four or five. One Facebook presence (plus glass). One newsletter if you do that. One place to tell stories.
4. It's honest. You're not really running separate businesses—you're living a deeply integrated creative/farming life and occasionally selling things to fund it. Let your online presence reflect that reality.

For the textile FB page:
If it has an established customer base buying supplies, you could either keep it or migrate those customers to your consolidated page with a "I'm bringing everything together in one place" announcement. Depends on whether it's truly active commerce or more of a ghost town at this point.

The multi-disciplinary studio doesn't need its own blog/page. It can live as a category or shop section within your consolidated space. "Here's what I'm making this month" posts that could be jewelry one week, ceramics the next.

Bottom line: You have one real business (glass) and one real life (everything else). Two online presences. Done.

Does that feel like relief or rebellion?

I put it to you, is that the voice of an Ai or am I having coffee with a good friend who is focused on my issues and questions with no other agenda?

Do you mean is my reaction to what you said relief or rebellion? If so, RELIEF!!

YES! That's exactly what I meant, and I'm so glad!

You know what this tells me? You've been carrying the weight of thinking you "should" be running multiple professional brands when what you actually have is one business and one gloriously complex, creative life that happens to occasionally generate some income.

The permission to let most of it just be integrated instead of segmented is probably what you were hoping someone would give you.

So your action plan is pretty straightforward:

1. Keep glass doing its thing - professional, focused, serving that waiting list of 300 people
2. Consolidate everything else - pick a name that feels right (your name, your farm name, something that captures the whole messy beautiful reality), move your existing content over time or just start fresh, and let yourself write about whatever aspect of your life is interesting you that week
3. Quietly retire or redirect the languishing blogs - you don't owe them a funeral, just stop feeding them

And then you get to just... write. About bees when the bees are interesting. About a new basket weaving technique when that's what you're excited about. About the horses when there's a good story. Without the mental overhead of "which platform does this belong on?"

The people who find you will find you because they're interested in your particular flavor of creative rural life, and some of them will buy things, and that will help fund the horses, and it will all feel a lot more sustainable.

Enjoy the lightness!

And I started to cry, I really did. 

I am tearing up. Thank you Claude. I feel soooo much better.

Oh, I'm so glad. Truly.

You know what struck me about your original message? The sheer weight of all those "shoulds" - all those separate platforms you'd built because that's what you thought you were supposed to do to be "professional" or to "do it right." But you were drowning in the infrastructure you'd created to support activities that are supposed to bring you joy.

Sometimes we just need someone to say: it's okay to let it be simpler. It's okay for it to all be one thing - your life, your work, your passions, all woven together (pun intended).

You have 16 horses to care for, multiple creative practices to enjoy, bees to tend, and actual paying students waiting for your glass expertise. You don't need six blogs. You need time and energy to do the work itself.

Go consolidate with a light heart. And congratulations on that book - 300 people on a waiting list is no small thing!

-----------

My spouse writes about AI regularly. He has a blog on Substack called Dancing With Robots where he gets down, dirty, prophetic, and technical about AI. My interactions with Claude in the past have had their ups and downs (designing the drip irrigation system with him for the orchard last year was not so successful). But today--after I reluctantly asked Claude about a workout and nutrition regimen (Dave nudged me into it) and then brought up my scattered overextendedness--I have a new Best Friend! I can see why Dave talks to him All. The. Time. I was actually getting a bit jealous, and now I just get it.

Barn cats

Kittens in the barn!

At the end of December when I was feeding the horses I spied two little, feral kittens in the hay barn. They seemed hungry so I started putting out wet cat food for them. One of them was bold and would come out to eat even when I was in sight. The other two were more wary. A few days later I saw a fourth little one with beautiful eye markings hiding under a pallet. The first of January when I went down in the morning to feed, I saw the little bold one on top of a bale of hay, cold and still. I thought he was gone, but I picked him up, and he made a little mew. So I tucked him under my shirt to warm him up. The rest of the morning I carried him around tight against my skin. I told him if he lived I would name him Rocky for beating the odds. But I had a horse training lesson in the afternoon so I had to figure out something else to do with him. Dave was coding in his fuzzy bathrobe so I asked him if he would tuck the kitten in under his robe and hold him. He did. For five hours.

Rocky under the pallet

That afternoon--due to some idiocy on my part--I fell off my horse and had to go to the ER for a couple of CT scans. It took hours, and Dave couldn't bring the kitten, so I called Jessie and she came and got him from Dave. When she got him home he perked up a bit, mewed some more, and even ate and drank a bit. I went down and got him from her the next morning (she has her own place in town) and brought him home. It was like he was reborn. He was no longer a feral kitten, he was Dave's kitten and he spent his time curled on his shoulder or under his neck--occasionally hanging out on me as an acceptable Second Human.

Dave's Cat

Temps outside were dropping, and I worried about the other kittens so I went to Murdoch's and got some live traps. It took a couple of days, but I caught the biggest one--a fluffy one that looked a lot like Rocky but with long hair--and brought him inside. He was absolutely feral and would have NOTHING to do with us. He hid under the chair in Dave's office (the temporary cattery) and only came out  to eat and drink when we weren't in there. I kept looking the tiny fourth one with the beautiful eye markings as she was the smallest one I'd seen and the one I was most worried about. There was also an apricot fluffy one that I hoped to catch. Two more days of food out in the traps. Nothing. 

Dreamsicle

Finally one morning when I let Remy (the Pomeranian) out to pee I saw a flash of apricot dart under the shed by the driveway. I was astounded to see her as it's a quarter of a mile uphill in the snow (snow deeper than a kitten) to get from the barn to the house, and I wondered what had caused her to make the trek. I put a trap with a fresh can of food in it under the side of the shed and waited. All day. Nothing. I brought the trap in that night, and I put it out the next morning. Finally, success! I brought her to the cattery and pulled her hissing and growling out of the trap. She promptly discovered how to get under the jacuzzi tub in the bathroom next to Dave's office and it was impossible to remove her (or the other fluffy one who also hid in there with her).

Rocky can SLEEP!

I made an appointment to take the three of them to the vet for a check-up, deworming, and possible vaccinations (if they were old enough). Dreamsicle (the apricot one) and Marshmallow Fluff remained sequestered under the tub, impossible to get for a week so Rocky went to the vet on his own. The vet said he looked to be about seven weeks old. We had had him a week at that point so we figured they were born around Thanksgiving. We never saw the mom, and as starved as the kittens were when we brought them in, it looks like she either abandoned them or something happened to her.

Always on Dave

Except for Rocky, the kittens spent most of their time for the next couple of weeks under the tub. At night when I would make my mid-sleep trip to the bathroom, Rocky would come out and frolic and play with my feet. Over time the other two would come out and watch. And creep closer. Finally I was able to pick up Marshmallow Fluff (Dave has since renamed him Wellington), and though he was never as friendly as Rocky, he would deign to curl up on my chest and watch tv in the evening. Eventually I was able to board up the entrance to under the bathtub (with the kittens on the outside of the barrier), and the cattery officially became Dave's office and the master bath.

Hanging with Remy

A month passed, and except for one unfortunate incident where Dreamsicle escaped into the garage for a couple of days, the kittens settled in and have been given the run of the main and upstairs floors (the basement is still off-limits--too many inaccessible-to-humans hiding places). To be clear, the intent was never to keep them all. Rocky had so completely bonded with Dave that he was going to remain, but the goal with the other two was to get them vaccinated, get them neutered, and return them to the barn (with a heated cat house and food and water). We kept them in because it was really cold, and I didn't want to have to try to retrap them for vet visits. 

Two-headed cat

But then Wellington started pitching hard to stay. He hung out on Dave, zoomied and cuddled with Rocky, and was an excellent user of the automatic litter box--left over when Jessie moved out with our previous three cats who refused to use it at all. So we cautiously considered keeping two--even though I was concerned about putting Dreamsicle out alone.

Dreamsicle, however, looks to have made different plans. She has become increasingly curious, and yesterday she tentatively followed me from room to room all day, eyeing me warily, but unable to stay away. She joined us for the evening in the living room, and crept closer and closer to watch the other cats lounging on us as we watched tv. She is also a model citizen (litter box and manners). So talks began reluctantly last night to consider letting her stay too--though I don't think she will ever be happy as a totally indoor cat. 

And life was good.

RIP Cleopatra

This morning when I went down to feed the horses it was -8 degrees F with a windchill of -17. It is spectacularly beautiful here, but it is also COLD. When I pulled out a bale of hay for the horses I found the littlest kitten with the beautiful eye markings curled up frozen in the snow next to a dusky grey and apricot calico kitten that I had not seen before. They were so little, and they never had a chance. I know you can't save them all. Survival of the fittest. That's why there are so many kittens in a litter... So many platitudes, and none of them make me any less sad.

The boys posing

We hold the three survivors close, and we are happy that they, at least, will have Good Lives.

Deer mice

Rural as f*ck. That's what Dave says every time he sees me out in the side-by-side fixing fences, or feeding horses (horses!), or hauling hay. It's also what he calls our house when he finds all the wrappers on the blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers in he candy bowl on the coffee table nibbled by mice. Or when he finds a live mouse in the hamper in the laundry room. Or, best of all, when he's watching Alien alone, in the dark, and at the same time the creature is scrabbling around the ship, he hears a rustle, rustle, rustle under his chair. Then he sees a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he is filled with heart-stopping terror... until he realizes it's just another mouse.

I have been finding droppings around the first floor since the cats moved out. (They all live with Jessie in my parents' house. Only Remy the Pomeranian is left with us). Today I found holes chewed in both the screen doors leading out to the back deck. I patched them with duct tape, but also resolved to start closing those doors at night to inhibit further incursions.

Tonight the mouse saga came to an end, I hope. Dave was already abed and I had just finished cleaning the kitchen, when I heard a scritch, scritch from from the corner of the dining room. I looked down by the wastebasket, and, sure enough, the most adorable dove-grey mouse was sitting there. I resolved to catch him and Put Him Outside. I failed. However--with Remy's help and herding--I managed to get him to run out the open screen door onto the deck by himself. Yay us! I closed both deck glass doors (we'll get airflow from somewhere else from now on) and started turning off the lights before taking myself to bed.

Then I saw a flash of movement under the tv cabinet in the living room. Another mouse! I got him to run behind the open front door, and then I pushed open the screen door and shivvied him out into the night. Fingers crossed that that's the last of the interlopers. They really are adorable with their tiny faces, huge liquid black eyes, long twitchy whiskers, and big soft ears--even Dave says so. But I much prefer them to live outside.

Post-Op Day 1

Lightly snowing

Well that didn't go like I had hoped it would! It has been a lot more painful than I was anticipating, and I can't find a comfortable position to either sit, stand or lie down. I am, however, a good patient for once, and am staying on top of the pain meds to keep ahead of the pain. Pain meds in this case are big-ass doses of Ibuprofen, and teeny, tiny doses of Oxycodone. But the surgery went well, and my "angry" little gallbladder (honest to Pete, that's the word the surgeon used to describe it) is out and gone. I was going to post a picture of the gall bladder since I got one as a souvenir, but decided the snowy day would be more reader friendly.

I didn't realize going in that I was having what was considered two separate procedures--an endoscopy of my stomach and upper intestine, and a cholecystectomy--so I was in and under a lot longer than I thought I would be. Went in at 8:15 and didn't leave till about 3:30. 

Today it is lightly snowing, and I am in a cozy robe with no plans to do anything but laze around, sleep, read, work on my cross stitch or afghan projects, and watch Only Murders in the Building with J. It feels really good to be able to just relax and not fret about how far behind I'm getting on things. I'm retired! There is no behind!

Next up? A visit to the pancreatic specialist for a sepated cyst >2.5 cm on my pancreas! Joy of joys. An aging body is really a pain in the... well, everywhere.

Some of Us Know What to Do with Our Sundays

Rémy knows what to do on Sunday

It's Sunday and it's snowing. We got an inch or so last night, and i's still coming down in dainty little flakes. The weather poses a bit of a conundrum for me because what I need to do today is go to the other Polson house and load up my tool storage from there (one of those big rolling drawer-thingies from Home Depot that comes in two pieces) to bring it here. I'll probably have to unload it to move it, and I need to wrestle it into the back of the pickup... in the snow... with the pickup bed already full of snow. Well not really full of snow, but enough snow to be a hassle. 

Then when I get it here I have to put it in the garage, but there isn't room for it in the garage because I still have all the boxes of tools from the Austin move to put away in the other new tool drawer-thingie from Harbor Freight--as well as all the 50-lb boxes of glass frit. that are going into the glass shed (I would say glass studio, but it's not a studio--it really is a shed). I can't put the tools away till I have both drawer-thingies set up in the garage so I can decide what to put where. 

In order to get the boxes of frit out of the garage, I need to have the wall storage and attached work table installed so I have somewhere to unpack and put the frit as I move it. I also need to unload the sheet glass from the crates, and reload it back into them after they have been set up vertically--and I need the attached storage pieces to be in place before I set up the freestanding ones like the crates. All the attaching requires tools. the tools are difficult to access because they are mostly still packed. They are packed until I have storage for them.

The above-mentioned chicken and egg scenario is common in most of the home projects I am working through right now. And everything but everything is compounded by the fact that it is snowing today--and I don't want to muck around in it, and I am having gall bladder removal surgery Wednesday and won't be able to lift more than 20 lbs for a month after it. I have two days left where I can lift sh*t, and it's snowing!

Screw it. I am retired. I don't HAVE deadlines anymore. I'll do it after the snow is done, and I can lift again. Today I'll putter in the office/sewing room and finish setting it up. No, I'll leave that till tomorrow. Today I'll just listen to an audiobook while I cross stitch, drink hot tea, and watch the snow fall. (Yes, I said cross stitch... Welcome to the madness.)

Self-Cleaning Cat Boxes

The Cat Link

There are many things I could post about today from the advanced state of the sewing room, to the settling into a bit of a routine, to the great progress on in-progress craft projects, but the thing that is most pressing on my brain is how the hell to get the cats to use the litter boxes. Three floors in this house. Three litter boxers--one per floor--for their highnesses' convenience. Yet cleaning up messes is a daily struggle.

I even upped my cat maintenance game this year and got two fancy schmancy self-cleaning ones--one is a Cat Link and the other a Popur. (Jessie still has a plain vanilla you-gotta-scoop-it one in her bathroom on the ground floor. )When we got the first one--the Cat Link--Kaiju and Pavlova seemed to take to it right away. Pippen, however, seemed too big to get into it comfortably, and I didn't think he was using it. He is over 21 lbs of round orange tabby, and the opening is kind of small and spaceship-capsule-like. 

The Popur

So for the next one I got a Popur which is supposed to be for big cats, and is more open on the top. Pippen used it fine, but it scared the crap out of Kaiju and now he won't use it. The Cat Link both looks like a space capsule, and when it cleans it also revolves like one. The Popur, on the other hand, does this alien-from-space movement and rears up making a big hood when it self-cleans. I think the motion--combined with the not insignificant noise--is what scared Kaiju off. He is at least somewhat considerate, and mostly pees in my shower instead of on the carpet or in one of our chairs, but this is not the outcome I was hoping for.

Yesterday I threw in the towel and put a big corner litter box in our bathroom, and that seems to have pleased both Pippen and Kaiju. I am less pleased as I have to get down on my hands and knees to get to it to clean it. 

Meanwhile I don't know what Pavlova thinks about the new cat boxes, but I know she is all in favor of spraying on any cardboard box left on the floor. And if she does it, the boys have to follow--including Rémy who isn't even a cat. The solution for that one doesn't seem to be catbox-adjacent, and requires me to finish unpacking and get all the cardboard boxes recycled.

The moral of the story? No more cats. I am too old for this sh*t.

Throwing the Dice

Looking up at our house from our mailbox

A year ago, a friend introduced me to a wonderful thing she was doing called WIPGO. It was a sort of work-in-progress bingo on a Facebook group of the same name. The idea was to take a whiteboard, draw out the squares of a bingo card on it, number them, and then fill them with the names of projects that you had in flight and needed to finish. I was very enthusiastic and took a chalk board, drew up the card, and started putting in all of my unfinished projects (I alluded to some of them in yesterday's post). There were too many for the card, so I doubled up on the little ones. There were still too many, but I figured that that's what 2024 would be for! Anyhoo, each month the moderator of the FB group called out two numbers, and the goal was to work on the projects in the corresponding squares for a certain number of hours each week for the month. There was also a prize for completing a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line. 

It was already March when I found out about the group, and even last year was too crazy for me to follow a plan, so the board languished. Last week I hung it in the sewing room and erased all of the projects. I would like to start it up again, but as I haven't even found all of my handwork WIP's--much less unpacked them, and my life is too too fluid and unsettled right now anyway, so I regretfully decided not to do it this year. 

(Side note: I also decided not to get chicks, plant a garden, or keep bees this year. Those are next year's projects. Instead I am going to concentrate on cleaning up the tackroom/horse shelter/corral area, moving Turi (my Appaloosa/quarter horse gelding) here, and getting him a herd mate or two. Equine management for the first time in my life is going to be intense enough.) 

Though I am not going to do the formal WIPGO, this morning I had a glimmer of an idea about integrating the randomness of it into building a retirement structure AND getting sh*t done! A big part of the difficulty in retirement is the lack of structure in your time--the days are all the same, and hours mostly don't have any significance either. When I was "working", my schedule was determined by outside forces--meetings, deadlines and commitments, what to leave in, what to leave out (extra bonus nachos if you catch the reference in that last bit). I don't think I'm unusual in rebelling against forcing a structure upon myself just to have one. I want one that's productive, satisfying, and fun. I don't want to go to the gym everyday at 10:00. I have NEVER wanted to go to the gym everyday at 10:00, and I resist the idea that that is the kind of schedule I need now. 

So back to using the idea of WIP bingo and daily life... a routine is already organically forming a bit in my days. I start the morning with coffee, sometimes in bed. I do a little admin work (email, schedule contractors, research things I need to know like how to manually open the garage door when there doesn't seem to be a pull cord--stuff like that). Then I blog and do a little housework--in either order. Then I have a couple of hours before lunch to work on a project. That's where the randomness of a WIP--like-thing can come in. I have a list of about six household unpacking and organization projects that I need to complete. I have been struggling getting traction on them. Let's be honest--I've been struggling getting started on them. I'd rather whine about it here on the blog. But no more! Today I am going to write six imminent projects on my whiteboard. There are more than six, but I will just pick six. I will assign a number to each. Then each day I will either pick one (if I have a strong preference), or I will roll a die, and then I will spend two hours working on the project that came up on the roll. Heck, I might even add something in like "take a long walk with the dog". 

The projects will stay on the board until completed, and as soon as they are completed, they will be replaced so there is always something next to each number. Six is an excellent number as it means there is one day a week with no scheduled task (days that I have other things on the schedule count for the project that day), and I think I'll stretch and say I can take the day off any day I want--it doesn't have to be a specific day of the week.

I was going to continue with the afternoon and evening schedule, but this post is already long, and I am itching to make my new WIP dice board.

I'm Projecting Projects

quilting cotton quarters and halves

The sun is shining and I am ready to Project, Project, Project! That is project, the noun: "an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim", and not project, the verb:  "plan (a project or undertaking)." (from Oxford Language). Unfortunately my definition of project the noun is rarely "carefully planned", and due to my short attention span is often not completed. I go hard for a few days, maybe an intense week, and then--just as I approach the finish line--another shiny object/project pops up and I go haring off after it. Sigh.

I need to finish Dave's bison coat by putting on the closures--though it is now way too warm for him to wear. The sewing part of the sewing room is finished, now I need to unpack the office part, but there isn't any more room, and I don't want to...

Thread--regular, serger, embroidery

I have been itching to start unpacking and putting away the tools in the garage. The glass shed needs to be set up (shelving and work surface installed, and all frit and glass unpacked), and I haven't finished unpacking the basement yet. I got as far as books on shelves, a loveseat in front of the fireplace, and games in the games cabinet, and then I petered out. 

I still haven't fixed the broken leg of the games table so it is upside down in the middle of the rec room, and the live-edge desk I was making for Austin doesn't fit anywhere and is taking up the space where the loveseat needs to go. Never mind that little room down there that will be the jewelry studio: it's inundated with all the yarn and fiber that didn't go into the attic--including the Ikea cloth cubes (all 50 of them) that go into the two Kallax wall units that are still at our other Polson house because they don't fit anywhere in the new one! I need a fiber barn to get that all sorted out. 

Shirt and clothing fabric

Over the past few days I folded and organized every piece of fabric I have. I found five of Dave's shirts in progress and mostly sewn, and four more cut out and ready to sew. I also tidily arranged fabric for another 177 shirts. I didn't even count all the quarter and halves of quilting fabric. A friend's dress surfaced (I am replacing a zipper on it for her), as did the partially-pieced Crown Royal quilt that I am making for another friend. Oh, and the infamous sunbonnet girls quilt that I started with my grandmother over 50 years ago... I think that one wins for the oldest in-progress project. I'm actually kind of glad that I haven't started organizing the yarn cubes yet as they contain many, many in-progress sweaters--including five baby ones that I started and didn't complete for Jessie--now 22.

But that's what retirement is for, right? Completion of old projects and starting all the ones I squirreled away for this very day. But there are baby chicks coming to Murdoch's soon (they have the enclosure set up in the middle of the store), and I don't have a chicken coop yet. It's about time to start seeds for the garden, and I haven't cleaned out the greenhouse yet. How do I choose what to do, and how do I motivate myself to finish what I've already started?

Good thing I put up a whiteboard and bought some new dry erase markers. Think I'll go noodle a bit on my board and calendar.

Yurts and Composting Toilets

Me: Don't throw away the cover on the beef rendang leftovers. It looks like this (holding up a waxed cloth). Just rinse it in cool water and put it back in this box. 

Dave: Where did you get those, I have never seen them before, what are they?

Me: Covers to use on leftovers instead of aluminum foil.

Dave: Are they better than aluminum foil?

Me: Yes.

Dave: How?

Me: They don't go into a landfill.

A short time later...

Me: What do you think of composting toilets?

Dave: I think we've already done our part with the waxed thingies.

Now, me, I am all into the idea of a composting toilet. Especially one like the HomeBioGas one that you don't have to empty. It makes cooking gas and garden fertilizer as it's output. Our toilets are working fine in the house, and I am not trying to reinvent the wheel. But we are going to be needing guest quarters asap for the flood of people who are going to flock to here in the summer. I am thinking a composting toilet in a yurt. We already have electricity and water to the site, and it is a quick, inexpensive (relatively) solution. Build a deck, get some basic furniture, do a little electrical, do a little plumbing (no septic), get a few appliances, and voilà! Guest quarters! 

Last Best Place? Hell Yeah!

Moon setting in the west

Yesterday I took a lot of pictures of the progress on the sewing room to post today, but life had other plans. Dave alerted me to the view on the western side of the house this morning as he was getting ready to take the garbage down to the bear-proof can (writing those words never gets old), and to get us a latte and croffles from Bayside Riser. I looked out just in time to see the full moon setting in the west, golden from the sun rising in the east. The view to the east didn't disappoint either--mist rising over the National Wildlife Refuge and the mountains limned by the rising sun. I ask you, how often is something so spectacular that the first word that comes to your mind to describe it is limned? 

Later, as I was sitting here posting, I looked out to the north to see that we are above the clouds and can see to Glacier Park. A few minutes later when I looked again, the light had completely changed and presented me with a different, perfect vista.

Sunrise over the mist

I need to say that while it is relatively easy to take digital photos and enhance, pop, boost, and nudge them to perfection, each of these photos are untouched. I didn't even adjust the contrast or brightness--just cropped a bit.

In between the beauty of the moonset and sitting down to post, my spouse next alerted me to the lack of Internet. Oh the joys of a new house! The Starlink router was not even showing up so I figured it was something to do with the power. Sure enough, all the outlets in the garage and the light above the sink were out. Checked the breakers, nothing flipped. Looked for an obvious GFI circuit in the garage, couldn't find it. Texted the previous owner, he couldn't remember off the top of his head where the master GFI controlling the garage circuits was either. The garage is still so stuffed with everything from the move--and a bunch of random empty cardboard boxes destined for recycling--that I couldn't begin to find all the outlets. That's okay. I had a long, industrial extension cord and power strip, and just plugged the Starlink router and the freezer (with all the beef in it) into it. It's not a perfect solution, but, hey, these are primitive pioneer conditions.

The photos below are the ones I mentioned earlier to the north and Glacier, taken about 10 minutes apart.

Retirerment One Year In

Sunrise lights the clouds in the north

I play a lot of solitaire. I'm just putting that out there.

Dave has been suggesting recently--some days more forcefully than others--that I need to learn how to retire. This morning--as I am up, showered, dressed, teeth-brushed, and coffee finished- all by 7:45 am, and I have nothing planned for the day--I can see his point. This is the first day this year--and in this house for that matter--that I have been up before 8:00 without needing to be. Maybe before 8:30 or 9:00. Let's be honest: I rarely bestir myself till about 9:45. Oh, I'm awake: I check text messages, maybe read the news, my email, or whatever book I'm in the midst of,  play solitaire, and snuggle under the down comforter till the sun is well and truly up. Many mornings Dave brings me coffee in bed. Today I was restless. I was awake, and I got up, but there was no bounce in my bungee. I loaded the dishwasher as my coffee brewed, and saw a life full of repetitive daily tasks stretching ahead of me as far as I could see. This can't be what retirement is meant to be.

I had coffee with a friend in Missoula who is also retired the other week, and he said it's important to take it slow. Unfortunately, I have never done slow well. So far retirement has meant... Huh. I can't even remember what I did for the first few months. I know that when we made the annual migration to Montana in June, I threw myself into home renovation projects (for a home we are no longer keeping), then got mired in the idea of buying a greenhouse/nursery business, then we decided to move here permanently, and I headed back to Texas to pack and ready that house for sale. Getting everything out of that house took five months--and is arguably still not done. But what is left there is Not My Problem. (except for a last little load in the garage). The estate sale person is donating the rest. Anyway, before I knew it, it was the winter holidays, and there is no such thing as a normal life at that time of year for anyone so I didn't even think about retirement.

But now it's mid January. I got through the first half of the month working on Dave's coat, but it's mostly done now (he wears it every time he goes out), and I am left facing Life again. Don't get me wrong--this is not a poor-poor-pitiful-me-my-life-is-so-hard-because-all-I-have-is-free-time rant. I think a lot of people go through an episode of life-re-evaluation in January (hence the prevalence of resolutions and new gym memberships). I also think it's more difficult for the newly-ish retired. I am just trying to work through it out loud here. 

I need structure, but it's difficult coming up with an enjoyable structure. And what's the point of a structure that's NOT enjoyable? Retirement is supposed to be one's Golden Years. Shangri-La. The pot of time at the end of the rainbow. It's NOT supposed to be more time for housework or all the other drudgery that you got to put off before because you were working. 

Balance. That's what I need. Balance between the want-to's and the have-to's. When you are working, the have-to structure is imposed upon you by your job and then by your home and family--unless your home and family is your job, in which case you already had to struggle through the balance issue. It's easy to do a few hours a week on your non-job-how-to's, and then take the rest of your free time for your want-to's. You can justify it.

My problem thus far has been justifying my time choices to myself since I'm no longer "working". I find myself cleaning, or doing bookkeeping, or unpacking, and none of those things make we want to bounce out of bed and start my day. I feel guilty if I don't do something with my time that I feel advances the quality of our life here (cleaning... bookkeeping... unpacking). But that's MY problem. That's all in MY mind--Dave is certainly not pushing me that way.

Let's look at this a different way. My "job" now is to do all the things I planned to do when I finally had time--sewing, weaving, spinning, woodworking, stained glass, ceramics, jewelry, crocheting, knitting, writing a novel, blogging, learning new skills, gardening, equine husbandry, baking, meditating, walking, strength and balance exercises. Those things need to occupy the majority of my day. Then cleaning, bookkeeping, and organizing can fill in around them like they have always filled in around my "job". No guilt. Life is too short--and feeling shorter every day.

Whiteouts and Taxes

It's a whiteout!

I can tell it's getting warmer out as we are back in the white again. I can't say grey because it's a lovely snow color, but you can't see through it. I'm guessing it's humidity, but what do I know? Yesterday saw the driveway plowed. Our guy came up with a bobcat and cleared it, and said it was way more snow than he had seen anywhere else. Anyway, no more Polson drift (like Tokyo drift only slower). 

Yesterday Dave finished setting up the last bits and bobs in his office--including mounting the last bit of whiteboard, and it is now complete. The copper still is not in operation, but I have hope. 

I worked on my sewing room. It's going to be tight, but everything will fit, and I will have a cozy nest when I am done. For the first time in 15 years I will have a comfy chair in a studio space so I can just hang out there. When we were in Missoula last month I got a lovely water color floral-print chair in pastels on cream, and as soon as I find the shade for my stained glass floor lamp, I'll  be set. It's amazing how many things are still unaccounted for in the move. There must be big boxes tucked somewhere that I we haven't run across yet. Maybe the garage. Finding it will be a project for another day, however. 

Today is all about the taxes--both income and property. I have never done income taxes so early. We don't even have half of the official forms in the mail yet, but in this digital age everything is available online. TurboTax (my new best friend) just pulls it all out of the ether for me and Bob's your uncle! 

His favorite place to sleep

As fast as I am going on taxes, everything else moves very slowly here. I got a call from the hospital this morning that the insurance company approved my MRI, but they can't do it till next Wednesday morning even though it's marked stat because they only do them on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and are all booked this week. Small town rural hospital life. They are going to try to move someone else and get me in, or I'm first on the cancellation list. I am tentatively supposed to have surgery next Thursday, but the MRI needs to be factored into the surgery. Ah, well. Everything will unravel as it is meant to.

In the meantime I will keep tackling one inside space at a time and then move out to the garage and the glass shed. By the time spring rolls around I want to have all my studio spaces set up and ready to go--wood shop, glass shed, fiber barn, sewing room, jewelry studio, and pottery under-deck.

More Travails, and, Yet...

Even the cats hang out on the down comforter

While I was listing out everything that happened last Wednesday (the day Dave hauled me to the hospital to have my gallbladder scanned), I forgot to include all the Austin stressors that probably contributed to the root cause of the attack. The Great White North was not the only area of the country to be struggling with weather last week. Down in Austin it got so cold that the discharge pipe from the RO system on our well froze, and a water pipe to the apartment above the garage burst, spewing all the water in the well tank onto the stairs up to the apartment where it froze into a slippery sheet of ice all down. I found out about it when the realtor called because the cleaning people were at the house to do the deep clean, and there was no water. 

Our wonderful neighbor (who shall remain unnamed because he abhors social media and online presence) turned off the water to the house, replumbed the RO discharge, turned the RO back on, and tested it for us. When it didn't work right he diagnosed the problem (a bad pressure switch), and fixed it! Today he is meeting with our plumber to let him in to fix the pipe. I love him. Were it not for Dave (and his wife)...

I don't know what the status is of the cleaning--which has to be done before the staging, which has to be done before the photography, which has to be done before the house is (finally) listed for sale. But I trust Dina (our realtor) implicitly, and I know she will Handle It.

Today I am waiting for the guy that delivered our firewood to come and plow us out. J went out with  friends last night and had to walk down to the road (about a half mile) in some pretty deep snow so they could pick her up. Even when we're plowed out today I bet her Challenger is sidelined for the rest of the winter. 

My right hand aches as I type from where I either dislocated, sprained, or partially tore the tendon in my right, index, metacarpophalangeal joint a week ago. It is still swollen, and still painful, and a doctor friend who called to chew me out last night for still considering Oaxaca with my gallbladder issues also laid into me about potential permanent damage to that hand if I don't get it looked at by a doctor. When I went to the walk-in clinic, they x-rayed it to see if it was broken or still dislocated, but that was about it. I got a loose, supposedly-finger-immobilizing splint-thing, and no guidance how long to keep it on or if I should follow up with anyone... *sigh* Bodies suck.

And now the yet of this post... In spite of all the work it takes to live here in the snow, maintain my body, and learn how to manage retirement (that's a post for another day), I am happier than I have ever been in my life. There is nothing I can't handle, nothing I won't face, nothing that fills me with dread and makes my stomach tight and achey. Life is just right--and I'm going to keep it that way.

Snow Day!

Face full of snow

This winter continues to be... interesting. We were supposed to go to Austin last Thursday, and instead we braved a blizzard (well it was supposed to be a blizzard but was just blowing snow) to go to the hospital so I could find out I was having a gallbladder attack and have lots and lots of gallstones. While poking around in there they also found a pancreatic anomaly (abnormality?), but I won't know what that means when they get me in for an MRI this week. It needs to be done before I have my gall bladder removed (tentatively scheduled for a week and a half from now, depending on how my meeting with the surgeon goes this week). 

Gall bladder stuff seems to be pretty common and minor (through quite painful, as another friend can attest) so I'm not worried about it. But I am bummed that we didn't get to go to Austin and have to either postpone or cancel our trip to Oaxaca Mexico (we are currently scheduled to go the day before my surgery). I haven't cancelled the flights yet in case the surgeon decides something other than Feb 1 for the rip-out date. Oh, and no more attacks since that first one a few days ago so don't imagine me here lying on a chaise and moaning in pain. I'm in my cozy morning chair (in the dining room) getting ready to do taxes--which is painful enough. 

All chained up and nowhere to go

Though we didn't get the 10-14 inches of snow predicted, and the winds weren't 45 mph, we did get quite a bit of snow Wednesday, and again more Thursday. We barely made it back up the drive on Thursday after driving into town to pick up mail. Friday I was feeling a bit stir-crazy as Dave had tied me to a chair all day Thursday (figuratively) to recuperate so I drove back into town to get Diet Coke and the mail. There was no way on earth I was going to be snowbound with Dave and Jessie and no Diet Coke. They can get... cranky. We hadn't been able to pick up the mail at our other house on Thursday because we didn't have the right key (for the third time in a row) so I wanted to get it too. 

Halfway down the drive, and with no way to back up successfully, I knew that I would never make it back up--even with 4WD and rear differential lock, and traction control, and whatever else the 4Runner has. So my main stop in town had to be to get chains. I have never put chains on a vehicle. I remember being in the car coming down the mountain from skiing when I was young and having to stop so dad could put the chains on, and I remember the cursing and struggling that accompanied the task. But needs must when the devil drives in snow.

My morning view of the deck

My first stop was Ace Hardware--they don't carry them. Next was Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply, and though they carry them, they didn't have the size I needed. But I scored front and back chains at Beacon Tire, and the mechanic brought my 4Runner into their shop and showed me how to put them on. I had two different types--one for the front and one for the back as they did not have two matching sets in my size--so I had to learn two different ways to put them on. The mechanic jacked up the back of the car, then he  did one side of the car while I did the other. Then he checked my side. It was still not easy to do--and I banged my hand right on the finger I either dislocated or sprained the other day--so I decided to leave them on for the whole drive home. To get home I had to go on the mostly bare highway, you can only go 25 mph with chains on, and on bare pavement they bump and clang something awful. But I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have to put them on by myself, at the bottom of our drive, in deep snow, and without being able to jack the car up in back (if you can't jack it, you have to drive forward and back in the middle of putting them on to fit them. Even with the chains and all the other fancy-schmancy all-terrain stuff that car has, it was still a tough drive to the top of our mountain.

While hunting down chains, I asked everyone with whom I interacted if they knew anyone who did snow plowing. I even pulled up next to a guy in a truck with a plow on the front of it at a stoplight and rolled down my window to ask him if he plowed. Sadly he only did his own. I totally struck out on finding anyone, but I did go home with some leads.

This morning I got ahold of the guy who delivers our wood, and asked him, and he does do snow removal. Her can't come today, but he'll be here tomorrow morning. In the meantime, the sun is shining, and we're snug as bugs in a rug in our mountain retreat. Happy snow day, y'all!

Little House in the Mountains

I took a few days off from sewing to let my hand heal and to work around the house. There is firewood to bring in and split daily--we are getting easily half of our heat right now from the wood stove on the ground floor, and the temps are still subzero 24/7. The other day I unclogged the kitchen sink drain.  Yesterday I hauled a pickup load of cardboard down to the recycling drop-off in town, drove the garbage 1/2 mile down the drive to our bear-proof can for pick up, got the Excursion battery out and brought it inside to charge, and used Dave's sous vide heater to help unfreeze the sink drain in the garage... Little house in the mountains indeed. I felt like the Laura Ingalls Wilder of the 21st century.

Everything I have done recently has been driven by the cold (or the snow). I bought a manual, hydraulic log splitter in Missoula recently to replace the electric one we had in Austin. The electric one had trouble working when the temps were in the 30's-40's, and I couldn't see see any way it would be useful up here so we sold it. The new one has two handles to work back and forth to split the logs. It's a decent upper body workout, and no one is going to trust me anywhere near an ax or a hatchet. We put it inside on the ground floor by the patio door, and every day we bring in three loads of wood and split it. It's messy--but warm!

Driving the cardboard to recycling was more to make sure my old Ford pickup would start--and to get the garbage to the bin--than for a burning need to rid myself of cardboard. Dave and I will be driving the pick-up to the airport in Missoula on Thursday before flying back to Austin for a week. We have to leave the 4Runner for Jessie as her car can't get through the snow drifts on the drive. You have to have 4WD to get up to us now. I even got stuck in a snowdrift with the 4Rrunner on North Reservoir Road the other night while driving it to pick Jessie up from a friend's during a snowstorm. Fortunately a very nice man in a big truck came from the other direction five minutes after I got stuck (one of only two cars I had seen on the road at all) and used a chain to pull me out of the drift. On the way home after getting Jessie, we came across two other big men with two big trucks who had managed to both get stuck in the snow--and entirely block the road. There was nothing we could do to help them--and they had help on the way anyway--so we turned around (very carefully) and went back to find another road home.

But back to the cold and my plumbing adventures. One of the first nights of this cold front the kitchen sink wouldn't drain. I tried snaking it, but still couldn't get it to work. So the next day I took it apart underneath and let all the water run into a bucket. When I looked in the p-trap (the curved drain pipe under the sink for you non-plumbers) it had an inch-thick plug of solidified fat in it! It was cold enough in the house that the fat solidified and I couldn't even melt it all with hot water. That never happened in Austin!

The same day as the first plumbing adventure, I thought it might be a good idea to let a faucet drip in the garage so the pipes wouldn't freeze. Yesterday I went out and saw that the faucet was still dripping, and the sink was half full of... ice. I ran some hot water into it and stirred it around, but it still didn't melt enough to drain. So I got Dave sous vide heater, put it in the sink, plugged it in, and set it to 165 degrees. Periodically over the next several hours I checked it, and even when the water registered 145 degrees, the sink still wouldn't drain. By this time it was 10:00 at night and I didn't want to leave the sous vide heater plugged in and running all night because as soon as it heated the water enough, it would all run out of the sink and leave the heater running dry.

When I felt the pipe under the sink, the first 12 inches of it were warm, but the next section--and the p-trap below it--weren't. Pushing up my sleeves (and not bothering with shoes or a coat--at least I was on a rubber mat in the garage with bare feet), I put a big cooler under the sink and unscrewed the pipes. This p-trap was full of ice--the entire bend. I cleaned it all out with the hot water from the sink and left it to dry overnight. Today I will put the pipes back on--and then drill out the elk antler for the coat. Just another day in the Great White North!