28th July 2009

Been a little busy and not alot to report about in a blog, but thought it was
time for an update.

I am still house hunting. My offer was not accepted by the bank for the 1920
farmhouse which has been foreclosed on, so it still sits empty and the bank
still owns it. Apparently this is not uncommon and it could take a few months
for a foreclosed house sale to go through. I am patient and if they really want
to keep it, they may. I put 2 offers in on it and if they really want to keep it
for many more months at that price, they may (and they foreclosed on it 7 months
ago). In a few months if I have not found anything better, I will put another
offer in on it. But all the subflooring needs to be redone so I would have
preferred not to do that in the rainy winter months.

In the meanwhile I have not been idle, been looking at various and very
different properties. Some have more land, some have less, some have a larger
house, some have nothing on the land. Some are more urban and some are more into
the mountains with no neighbors. One lovely perfect piece [with GOOD neighbors -
Century farms surround from the 1870's] and 22 feet of topsoil) I am talking
with country and state officials before I put an offer in on it as there is
paperwork SNAFU's with it, so that one is going to take a bit too before I can
get a definite answer and I am OK to wait with that one, because the longer they
keep looking for an answer for me, they have not said no. I would be building my
home from the plans I have hoarded for the last 2 years. The one I was going to
build on the 180 acres I was going to buy in Canada, before I decided to move
down here.

Photo Above: Property in yellow I am checking into with the county as it is stuck in EFU paperwork messups.

I have been still traveling back and forth between countries and with this heat,
I need to either get my AC in my truck recharged (after 9 years and using it
about 4 times in that 9 years, it discharged and I need to re-do it) or travel
at night as "Cyrus" also travels back and forth with me. But for instance today
is 105F/40.5C and it has been over 100F the last few days and a few days after
today. I am not used to the heat and the humidity and I have been melting. I
overheat pretty easy these days. Even when I did SAR and rock climbing, my
partners used to get mad at me for not even sweating, these days with hormones
and metabolism changes, I GLOW (horses sweat, men perspire and women glow you
know) up a storm where it looks like I walked in a typhoon.

With the heat I have not been sleeping well, so it is not uncommon for me to get
up and take a COLD shower at 3 am to cool off these days. I am also not used to
the 'city noise' of trains and fire engines. Some nights I have been getting 2-4
hours of sleep, so I tend to fall asleep in the afternoon for an hour or two.

I visited one of our DTTR members on one of my trips back and forth to see her
and her farm. Kim is a delightful host and pilot car driver to get me to and
from her home. For a smaller farm, she makes excellent use of her space. I
couldn't do much for her goat other than she already had been doing, her rabbits
are lovely, I really wanted to pick up one of her fuzzy ducklings (bet you
didn't know I have a thing for ducks and have never really owned any and
probably won't) , I scammed a future pound of butter from her cow and I am
envious of her herb garden. I have never seen a Lemon Balm BUSH before. It is HUGE!!!

 Kim also has a magnificent loom and her young son also has a loom of his own. We may
trade warping help on our looms one day.

Photo Above: Kim (a DTTR reader), me and her Dexter cow at Kim's farm one day when I visited her. (The 1969 is the year my brother was born and he gave me the sweatshirt as he did not like it).

I have been in contact with my old SCA (medieval reenactment) groups who have
not seen me in 9 years and they were amazed and happy to see me again. There
were a couple major events and I day tripped to them as my medieval camping gear
is packed away for now. I really wanted to attend as there were a couple classes
I was very interested in and I had a blast at. I was also in one of our local
town parades with one of my SCA groups and we were very surprised to have won a
trophy for our division. There were close to 200 entrants in the parade alone
(but not all in our division). I was also invited into the An Tir Archery Guild
and they hold practice a mere stones throw away from where I am staying.

I was going to go down and meet up with Angelia from OR last Sunday, but the
heat from the day before totally wrung me out. I was sad as I wanted to go to an
event with her and see her dance if her ankle was any better. The heat has
actually been making me ill and I was worried about the baby since it was making
me crampy-ish. So I chose not to go at the last second.

While I have been hiding from the heat, I have been writing articles for the
magazine, so they will be ready to go when I am able to use the press again. I
have someone in the family who works for a company who may be able to get me the
right kind of ink for the press. She came up with the reason why my ex decided
to keep all my ink as it was a mystery to me. She says he will probably sell it
as it is about $400 a 'cartridge' ( I go through about 3-4 of them per issue run
for just black). I just put another offer in on another house last night after
my structural engineer looked at it with me for the third time. It is an older
log home/farmhouse on a smaller bit of land, but in a good area and with an
OFFICE for DTTR! My first 'office' was a arm chair with a board across for a
desk with a laptop. There are two other offers in on the house, so it is the
gambling game of who bid the most. It is a cash sale only, sooooo....

The right house will eventually fall into my lap, but I REALLY want to be
settled before the baby arrives.

I have a friend who is coming to Oregon from back east to visit me and another
friend this week. L gets B for the first 4 days and I get him for the next 4.
To escape from the heat we are going into the Cascades one night (as I have to
pick him up over that way and WAY south) and then down to the coast for the next
3 days to spend time with my family, go crabbing and surf fishing. I don't care
so much for the surf fishing as I am a trout person myself, I would rather play
in the tidepools. We can't go clamming as all the tides are very high, even for
'low tide'.

Even though mom has a small yard, she has alot of vegetables and edible plants
in it. I picked a couple "buckets" of fresh blueberries yesterday, ate cukes on
my salad last night from her yard, she has tomatoes and peppers and Walla Walla
onions here and there. Even though I didn't get to plant a garden of my own for
the first time in remembrance this year, I am getting photos from people who
are growing them from seeds I sent them. The very rare 'Pony Pea", I sent 6
seeds to a friend in Wisconsin and out of 10 seeds, 9 germinated and are growing
into massive plants. I am quite pleased as I never could pull a crop off them
due to freezes and the short season on my former farm. He will send me a supply
of new seed when these ones go to seed. He is forgoing eating any of them this
year.

I got my seed bag back from T whom I trusted with it in April and it is stored
in the coolest closet I could find here. Until then it has never been out of my
sight so to speak, but I knew she would guard it well.

I got updated photos of "Tasha's" 5 puppies from the people who took them in.
Man are they cute!!! With their background I am sure they will be good working dogs.

So, not much else to report. Attempting to stay cool; working on projects for
the magazine as best as I can while living out of a backpack; visiting people as
I can; traveling [and I literally have a bruised bum from driving so much];
researching local green building materials and sources; touring salvage places;
locating the apple and fruit trees I want and deciding if I want to graft them
onto miniature rootstock to have as potted fruit trees or if I want to go for
the whole standard thing and take a gamble; hanging out in government buildings
and realtor offices; touring houses for sale and walking with my dog and trying
to keep my cats entertained.

Until next time, and hopefully I have a home to report about then....