Lavender Mineral Water Churned By The Lips of a Noble Steed: The Anatomy Of A Good Story.

     

 Some of you may be here for all the happy triumphant parts of the story. You might be a tad disappointed. It would be easy for me to sit here and give you every feel good moment of creating this dreamscape. There is no bravery in showing you the easy stuff. Where I learned the most was in between the victories.. The anatomy of a good story is a decent sized struggle. you have got to have a protagonist. I giggle a little now to think how much time we have spent on the struggle bus. Some days we still board it unknowingly. Some days we drive it. As long as we keep showing up day after day we consider that a win. Some days that we are winning don't really feel like a victory at all, just one more day that we arrived safely at bedtime and woke up the next day. You put your feet on the floor and try to make it happen all over again. There are seasons when putting your feet on the floor and not being crushed by the overwhelming amount of work that faces you is more than a win. Even in the most dreamy stories there is an element of survival. 

     The year before we moved into our house we had the most ridiculous amount of bullshit to contend with. The plan was for us to move into a reasonably finished house. We knew it wouldn't be completely done, but to have good bones in the works and the essentials in place. We sure overshot this one.

     Our situation in short was that we had to move as soon as we could. The litany of crazy we faced that last eight months is now quite comical, but at the time is was not very fun. We could not get skilled labor out here in a timely fashion to save our lives. When we could indeed find some, we hit  an expensive wall. That wall was a crazy eye lid cancer that only like one in fifty bajillion people get. Chad took it like a champ. Looking at the medical bills for that and indeed feeling quite low I realized that if this is the cost of a tiny pimple sized cancer without any radiation or chemo, how in the world do other people afford things far more dire?  

     When I say nothing went at all as planned I could not be more real with you. My job had become bananas. Hospice nursing was becoming increasingly ridiculous by the day. I had found a new gig but in the meantime I was working out my thirty day notice... note to self, when you leave a job unless you are bound by contractual law to do so.. don't give a thirty day notice. In my case it was thirty more days of abuse. I was working on average 14-16 hour days and then taking call. The things we needed to be doing, like trying to finish things up at the house and packing just did not get done. In the middle of all that madness we had doctors appointments and surgical procedures to contend with as well. By the time I got home I was exhausted, Chad was exhausted. 

     Initially my Dad was going to help us get the big stuff done. He didn't get to stay as long as he planned for reasons beyond his control, so that didn't work out. This left two home improvement newbies scrambling. We were short on two things to get everything we needed to be comfortable in the house, time and money. We had resigned ourselves to roughing it a bit, knowing that we wouldn't have everything in place . Budget wise we had banked a lot on my dads ability to help and this situation made us need to reframe our plan financially. We were looking at needing to carve out approximately 12000 dollars that we didn't plan on initially. As prepared for disaster as we thought we were..nope, it was far crazier than we ever expected.

     We moved into a house that was far from finished. Glamping would even be a stretch. Well I suppose that's all in how you frame it. We did get electricity …hallelujah. It was a little sketchy, but we were desperate. We had been bugging the electrician that gave us the only reasonable quote we got for weeks with no response. I found an electrician thru a friend who knew a guy needing some side jobs.  We however did not get plumbing completed. 

     The day we moved we had been up for nearly three days trying to pack and clean and load a truck. there were many tears, several nervous breakdowns and mountains of worry. I had been pretty poor in my life, but I had never been without resources like city water and plumbing. We faced it as bravely as we could trying to make light so that the kids would not be worried. We had to be the examples now of how to move forward in adversity. When we finally got everything on this property I was so exhausted that I could barely move and just lied there on our bed and shook. Every muscle in my body was screaming. I know that Chad felt the same. This was definitely not how I wanted to start this adventure. 

     One sunny afternoon I was sitting in my lovely claw foot tub in my yard, while wearing my bathing suit (no I was not brave enough even out here to be naked in my yard). My horse Bandit wandered over to the tub and started drinking from my bath water. I thought to myself, this could totally be a thing. It was warm and sunny, the water was cold and frothy. I was soaking in my tub reading a book. I could see the vacation brochure clearly in my minds eye. " Come enjoy a cool mineral bath in the wilds of West Texas!  Lavender scented water churned by the lips of a noble steed" or something like that. He even nibbled my toes.. kinky right? I was literally laughing at the site of this silly horse with his bubble covered face when the pig wandered out of the barn. She meandered over to lay beside me in the mud puddle formed by the leaky water hose. This was actually my life. Fortunately we did not have to use the camping toilet for long. We got a toilet installed but had to wait for awhile for the next part. I do now have an outside shower and bath tub planned eventually. In the summer I kind of miss that part of roughing it.  I'm sure my neighbors don't though. We don't live in close proximity to one another, but they have to drive by my place to get to theirs. This one wont be visible to the neighbors!

     I learned some important things here. If you get a long hose and use a spray nozzle, in the summer you can complete a hose shower with all warm water if you plan strategically. 50 feet of hose in 100 degree heat is wonderful for hot outside showers. It takes about 45 minutes for the water in the hose to heat back up again. If your last in line and there isn't enough daylight to heat your water, you can get clean with two good sprays if you plan your soap right. You can run a washing machine from a water hose brought in thru the window. You can dry clothes way faster on a clothes line. Chad can cook anything with a fire pit, an air fryer/convection oven and an instapot. I learned my kids actually liked living like poor church mice. The summer was carefree and fun, filled with happy wildlings at the end of the day. The most important thing I learned, you don't need much to be happy. In fact in my moments of humility and confession I learned how blessed I actually was to know that these struggles for me had an end date. My lack of stuff was an illusion as my worldly goods were in a storage container. So many of those I knew had been in these situations for far more nefarious reasons than mine. You can adapt to anything and come out ahead. Sometimes we don't believe this unless we are forced to see it. This experience gave me the knowledge that there is very little this house can throw at us now. We have been thru the worst parts of its incarnation into our safe space. From here on out, it only gets better. Rock bottom, and on the way up. 

     In this story the house is the protagonist. It is the fear we are trying to face when working toward its completion. It is the embodiment of how we see ourselves. It tells a story of who we are in the real world and the journey we are on in the spiritual. The possibility of its existence was born in our tragedy. The bravery we found in the struggle that led up to this move now gave us to the tools we needed to press on.  I dreamed all my life for a place to heal. I wanted a sanctuary for my peace. I wanted to be surrounded by life, gardens, animals in need of refuge, and  a safe place for my family. We are so trained in this world to believe we can have all these things immediately. Failure to achieve this illusion of perfection on everyone else's timeline often leads to shame and uncertainty.   I have found though, that the joy is in the journey. The journey however is not always joyful. It is comprised of the thousands of tiny things you learn along the way. Some days you can only tackle the elements required for survival and that is totally okay. I learned that it wasn't how other people measured my success that mattered. Trust me when I say most people don't think I'm a smashing success yet. Most people probably think we are a little crazy. In the farms current state we have likely reached the point where our crazy is cute and less threatening. What we are doing still raises quite a few eyebrows. I joke that we are the Weasleys from Harry Potter. Crazy house full of crazy nerdy love. I can even knit my kids horrendous sweaters with their initials, Hell I can even spin the wool for them! 

     As we have completed projects I have found such connection in carefully planning my crazy installations. Chad has found confidence in his ability to help me create as he works so hard to bring life to my vision. He takes my crazy ideas and helps me make them happen. Neither of us had any lessons on house building so I am pretty proud of him rising to the challenge. My very favorite thing to do is thrift around for things to reuse.  I have found that to do this I have to be very intentional about what I bring into this very small space. I have also discovered that if I know what I'm looking for, I can find it with a little patience. Some of my greatest victories have been finding the perfect lamp or the exact thing I was seeking to make a table. Every little thing I do teaches me something. In learning something my confidence builds. As my confidence builds I find my concern for the worlds timetable melt away. Even a shabby chic farm hut, as humble as it is, can make you feel like a millionaire. This house is our hero's journey. 

     I hope you enjoy the imagery of my very own noble steed. He is much better at tomfoolery than at being ridden. He enjoys a variety of musical stylings and has been known to enjoy a good dance sesh. He is my heart horse and even in the moments where I feel most low he can make me smile. I've needed his humor a lot since embarking on this quest. He never lets me down. I'm trying to decide how much I will charge future patrons for his extraordinary bathing assistance.