Metal Building's Addition

Phil and Jadon worked on putting the meter box up on the outside of the building. Using something called "unistrut," Phil was able to attach it. It is different to have our beautiful blue building now with a grey meter box mounted, but I am looking forward to consolidating all the electricity in one place.

Jadon, under Phil's direction, cooked some rib eyes for dinner. The flavor was good, but it took me about an hour—and almost some tears—to cut them. They had so much gristle/silverskin/fat. After Jadon was done, we turned the heat on for showers and within a few seconds, we had run out of propane.

It was 6:35, and we realized that the closest store wouldn't close until 7, so Phil grabbed the propane and made it there in time. We will go to bed clean tonight. Phew!

Last night while Phil was in town, I had a moment of panic where I thought I was in labor. To calm myself down, I went and read about the difference between real contractions and fake contractions, and was relieved to realize that I was definitely having fakes. As I was looking for the comparison, I noticed that the book mentioned the nesting instinct, and that women near the end will spruce up their environment.

That sure happened today. The reality of a new little person joining us soon has not fully sunk in, and I looked around the living area today and realized that I have piles of books, piles of papers, piles on the coffee table. This is not clean enough to welcome a new life! Not to mention the embarrassment of company, should I accidentally have to deliver here. The horror!

So I found a few boxes and put some books in storage. I started to sort papers.

I'm not done yet, but it was a good bit of nesting. I can even see a bit of my coffee table top!

Planning for a Week

Phil was a bit at loose ends, so we had a good conversation about tasks that are needed to do in the next five days, and tasks that are possible to do (there was another subset of "things that he can do when we buy a few missing parts," and since he knew he was headed to town, he planned to make a stop this evening, which opens up the tasks available).

The most needed thing was to continue re-grading the land, and so he did. The land overall was so mashed down from all the regrading, he needed to put on the backhoe. Isaiah did the digging for him for some hours, and then Phil moved the earth to the west side. By the end of the day, he had regraded enough for digging the electrical line.

And we had great news! The electrical hookup is coming a week from Monday! So after my vision of the end of October, it looks like October 7 will be the date. And due to wiring needs and such, Phil feels like that's about as soon as he can get to it. What a great relief. (And may October 7 NOT be the day of the baby's birth. Then we'd have to re-enter the queue.)

As for me, I read to Joe for a long time today. He was pathetically sick: after a sore throat at bedtime, and a night of thrashing (on our bed), he woke up snotty, pale, and a bit feverish. He was a captive audience. Ha!

And I vacuumed the motor home, which hasn't happened for some time. We had friends come to visit this afternoon, and Phil pointed out that they might need to go to the bathroom. It took an hour. I filled two canisters. It didn't induce labor.

There was a time when I had an interesting life, filled with sowing grain and growing plants from seed, and helping deliver lambs. Somehow vacuuming the motor home doesn't have the same appeal. On the other hand, it's a task easily accomplished in a day, and left me feeling good. So maybe a slightly less interesting life is sufficient unto the day.

Didn't We Do This Before?

I have vague memories of the long two and a half months it took to get electricity when we first moved here. But most of that sad story is buried deep in this blog, and I had forgotten it.

Had I remembered, it would not have been much of a surprise that the time I hoped the electrical service would be finished (tomorrow seemed a reasonable hope) is more like the beginning.

It's been a frustrating haul. After spending the first two days this week working on an engineering project, Phil turned his attention yesterday to getting electrical boxes mounted. The hoped-for paperwork from the electrical company hadn't reached the post office by yesterday morning (had the utility locate man come when he needed to, it would most likely have reached us last Saturday). That was frustrating, but not the end of the world. Phil mounted a panel inside the building.

And he built a cute-ish panel on the outside, too.

Then he went to try to mount panels in the barn, as the barn will soon have our meter box and such. But that proved nigh impossible. Not only did he not have the meter box to determine what is the appropriate size (can't get the meter box until the paperwork goes through), but the insulation in the barn made installing anything on the walls ... difficult.

This morning, after doing all the smaller tasks he could think of, he realized that there is really nothing he can do, electrically, until the paperwork came. He left in hope that it was in the box. Praise God, it was. So he drove right down to the electrical company, and paid them what they needed (and when he had a question, his contact was actually in the building and could answer his questions there). Tomorrow he'll get the ball rolling, and hopefully in two weeks (maybe three), the electrical company will come and work their magic.

So this day ends better than it seemed about noon, when all I could see was bleakness.

In happier thoughts, Joe has been practicing capital Ds on the white board. He quickly realized that that was a good shape to draw me, and he thoughtfully included a little person inside. I love it.

Abraham drew a very recognizable picture of Snowy, his Build-a-Bear.

Any Day (for the Next Five Weeks)

Phil regretfully spent the day doing engineering and not construction. C'est la vie. It will be good for him to be done with that project.

I had a fun day at church yesterday. I had two friends I haven't seen in a while tell me that my belly does not look real, because it is so basketball-shaped, and so high, it looks like I'm wearing a fake baby belly. It was actually a relief to hear that, because *I* don't think it looks natural.

But mostly it was fun because I have entered the zone. The baby could now come any day ... for the next five weeks. If I had to predict, I am guessing somewhere between October 18 and 20, so I am expecting about four of those five weeks will still be gestation, but at least now, when people say, "Isn't that baby coming soon?!" I can reassure them that I'm in the zone. And there is a great relief to that.

We had a fun thing happen after church, too. The one Chipotle in Charlottesville, our main culinary treat, is always ridiculously busy for Sunday lunch. It's like Disneyland, where the line not only wraps back and forth, but often extends halfway back through the restaurant. (Makes me wish I owned a Chipotle franchise.) Lately when we have errands, we buy lunch meat at the grocery store and eat it as we drive home, but the store was out of the type we wanted, so we finished our errands, hoped to avoid the after-church rush, and reached the restaurant, starving, at about 3pm.

Maybe a club had just arrived or something, but the line still extended halfway back through the restaurant! There's nothing inherently fast about fast food when you're the 50th person in line. But the very last person in line happened to be a friend from church, so when we saw that, we abandoned thoughts of driving home. He had come a half hour earlier and gone to run some errands to let the line settle down, and then come back to find the line longer than ever. So the lack of pepperoni and his delay meant that we enjoyed an unexpected time of visiting.

And one more story. One thing about this pregnancy that I don't remember from the past is that I am really an incubator. While I don't think I'm abnormally chilly in normal life, Phil's internal temperature runs a bit warmer than mine. I usually reach for my sweatshirt first; I'm happier in jeans a bit earlier in the year than he is.

Usually. I turned the fan on me a few nights ago, and Phil said later that he was surprised, as he was chilly. But the real shocker came last night. I was sleeping in cami and boxers, under a sheet, and I was plenty warm. I got up to go the bathroom, and noticed Phil: huddled under sheet and blanket, dressed in sweat pants and hoodie, with the hood up. "I was so cold last night, I kept waking up!" he said this morning.

Not me!

Grader Mania

Once Phil got going with his grader, it was hard to tear him away. He spent most of the day on Friday tearing down the mountain of dirt that has blocked the view of the finger for the last year.

It still shocks me a bit every time I round the corner of the trailer—there's nothing blocking my view!

So he shoveled gravel and moved dirt, and backfilled on all sides. He can actually drive around the building now.

I'm happy not to have four foot weeds everywhere. Orange subsoil is a nice change. It's so clean-looking!

And with the grade re-done to the south, the water should drain properly now.

Very nice.

And Isaiah made a swing: he conceived the idea, found the materials, and executed, with just a little help from Phil to actually tie the rope in the tree. The boys are loving it!

Today Phil went to install gutters, as we had rain predicted. After a good many hours, he realized that the salesman had neglected to get him all the parts he needed. Instead of the gutters simply nesting together, they have a connection piece (which he didn't get). And so the gutters are up, but he will need to take them down entirely and reconfigure them (we had wanted to drain all water to one corner, but on further research, it appears that anything over 40' long should have a high point in the center, sloping to both edges, which he hadn't figured when he got started today).

So, after that frustration, he went to move cows, a long move from the far south to the north. The rain started right around the time he left, and he was out traipsing in mud until well after the sun set.

***

Joe has been happy up on his bed. Last night, I was awake late, reading in bed, when suddenly his legs slipped down, followed by the rest of his body. I lunged to catch him (?) as he fell, but he hit right between Jadon's bed and our mattress, in that little 9" space. It could have been much more horrible than it was, as he didn't go over head-first, but he screamed and cried. The brothers all slept through it. (Makes me wonder a bit about the effectiveness of fire alarms!) After some Arnica, he calmed down and then went to sleep in our bed. I didn't fall asleep for a long time, as it is one of my nightmares to watch a child falling, and I had just had a real-life experience of that.

But the bed really is too crowded with Joe, too, so Phil built little rails for Joe today. It is hard to know what is the balance between safety for falling and safety for getting down an ill child or in the event of a fire: the former would have rails all the way along, but the latter requires some openings. So we will trust that the rails are sufficient for either purpose.

Phil Plays with His New Toy

Phil went on an extensive shopping trip yesterday for electrical parts. Back home, Phil and Joe put the handle on the French doors, and Joe took the keys. Joe cackled away as he locked and unlocked the door, and carried those keys with him for the next 24 hours or so, checking his pockets periodically to ensure they were still there, and reporting proudly that he did, indeed, still have them.

Phil also had to reschedule the electrical company. The utility locate man had inexplicably not showed up, and, of course, the electrical company came during the time that Phil was away. The utility locate has now happened, and maybe tomorrow the electrical company will be able to come again. That frustrated me a good bit yesterday (people! show up when you're supposed to!), but I don't think it makes much of a difference in the end.

I know that people always say that a child will not be sharing a bed with his parents when he leaves for college (or maybe that's about bed-wetting? anyway, same principle). I had wondered with Joe. But I think after his first night's failure to make it more than half the night, he was determined to make it overnight, so September 17 to September 18 he made it. He cried out with cold about 5am, I think, but made no move to join us. And when he woke up, I heard a bleary voice call, "Mommy! I made it overnight!" He was quite pleased with himself.

And beds are on his mind, as he reminded me later in the day that the baby will, at some point, need a bed, too. I didn't mention that by the time the baby is Joe's age, Jadon may have a driver's license and be only a few years away from leaving the house. But then, that would have had no meaning for Joe anyway.

As Phil and I continue to wrestle through sequencing of the building's progress, it seemed like the next step was to gravel along the final side, at least partially.

That will allow him to grade the long north wall.

If I understand correctly, it's because running electricity is the next step, and that requires the ability to trench as directly as possible. Which also means that mounds of eventual backfill dirt need to be out of the way, and the grade needs to be pretty well set, so that the electrical line can actually be placed in the ground and not just on the ground. It's safer, not to mention cheaper, not to be ruining electrical line.

Happily, the weather was perfect, the ground as dry as it's been all year, and Phil spent several happy hours playing working with the grader. (He also put up a bit more waterproofing, and fixed the insulation that had been sagging: a bit of excavating, then batten boards to give the insulation support, before backfilling again.)

Phil has ended every day this week, I think, saying, "That was a productive day." Excellent.

I suppose my days are productive as well, continuing to incubate. I have been having occasional Braxton Hicks contractions for the last six weeks, but I was not surprised that yesterday was a full moon—I had more, and stronger, contractions than I've had yet. I don't know that we know why some women have Braxton Hicks, but the midwife wonders if it's to get the uterus in shape. I am going to have one well-toned uterus by the time this baby comes out!

Home Visit

My first two births were in the hospital (two different hospitals, as the labor and delivery services built a new building in the interim). My second two births were at home (two different bedrooms and two different midwives, as my first midwife moved in the interim). As we prepare for, Lord willing, a third home birth, the question arose: how to have a home birth without a home? The cramped space in the trailer is not ideal (besides the lack of floor space, there is no running water). We thought about the RV, as it has a sink, but the bed only descends to about waist-height. And there is also a lack of floor space.

When I had Jadon, we asked Denise, a nurse friend from church, to be the doula/support person. I've never been a big fan of meds, and was far more scared of the epidural needle than the contractions, but for both Phil and I, we wanted someone there to support both Phil and I. Jadon's labor was very mellow for the first nineteen hours, and we went to Denise's house for dinner, where I ran stairs to ensure the periodic light contractions didn't stop. And at 2am, we asked Denise to come over, and she looked at me and said, "It's time to go to the hospital." The last seven hours were intense, but manageable.

Denise moved to this area a few years before we did, and she volunteered her house for our home birth. That wasn't a hard decision: lovely flower gardens, a bathtub, a house ... yes!

Today, at 36 weeks, we met the midwife and her assistant at Denise's house. Phil went with me, because the midwife wanted to give instruction on what to do if the baby "arrives precipitously." For us, because we have a 20-minute drive, she suggested that if I felt the baby was coming, it would be better to birth at home than to try to make it to Denise's—a birth on a bed at home is better than a birth on the side of the road. Good point.

Also, she explained the actual birth. Phil has always focused on my face, and I haven't paid attention to the actual birth. It was very interesting. She said that the head comes out, and then usually everything takes a break. Phil and I should both take a few deep breaths, and in that pause, the baby turns its head so the shoulders turn, too. She said, "The baby's face will look squashed and the color will not be pink, but a greyish-blue, and covered with mucus and blood. That's normal." Then, on the next push, we could grab the baby under the arms as it comes.

But hopefully none of that will be necessary.

In other news, Phil has plenty of little tasks to do, but nothing that is urgent. I think the lull in immediate big tasks is enough of a let down that we both wanted to sleep all day. We are tired! But he headed down and worked in the crawl space, and foamed and shimmed around the windows.

Joe didn't make it all night by himself up in his new bed. Sometime shortly after midnight he cried out and Phil lifted him down. A little later I accidentally brushed a cord with a heavy plug on the end. It hit my eye socket and even in my sleep I saw stars. Ouch.

And the boys and I went to harvest the apples. I had guessed that out of our 300ish trees, we would maybe have 20. Jadon was hoping for 100. I was probably closer. The trees had a scant number of small, hard fruits. I am so thankful we don't have to rely on the trees for our financial well-being.

Little Tasks Accomplished

Phil had a day of accomplishing little things. He needed to move the mill, as we have an electric locate scheduled. That required some mowing, as the weeds around the mill had grown up a good bit. He talked to a man at the electric company, as we want to move the electric panel from full exposure to elements along the driveway; we have a barn now, and that is a better place. So maybe Wednesday or Thursday that man will be here.

The grader arrived at the end of the day. What a relief to have that delivery made, and no longer wait and wonder if it would arrive.

Phil worked on the French doors, too. He was pleased that eventually, with shimming and other magic, he was able to get one side to swing perfectly, and the other to stick just a bit at the furthest point of closure. Maybe he'll plane off just a fraction, but I think it's probably fine as it is. What a relief to have that stinker done!

He also spent a few hours down in the crawlspace, and had some friends come down to hang out in the evening. So he had another good day.

***

We had an unexpected guest show up yesterday: what appears to be a snow white homing pigeon.

It has almost no fear of man, and I held it this evening. It has a green plastic tag around one foot (no ID on it, sadly), and a broken bit of twine around the other. I had tossed a bunch of weevil-ridden rye on the ground last week, and I wonder if, flying over, it was distracted by that feast and decided to hang out. It sleeps in the barn. The boys named him Gregory.


***

Phil and I have been debating how to help Joe transition to his own bed. Joe laughs about his amazing ability to be a pusher-over-er: if he sleeps on the edge, and I'm in the middle at the beginning of the night, Joe ends up in my spot by morning. One night last week I grew so tired of being kicked in the belly (ouch!), I put my head down to the base of the bed and awoke to find Joe, fast asleep, straddling my legs like a jockey, pressed up against Phil.

So our bed has been crowded, and it gets more crowded every day as my belly grows.

I mentioned to Joe some weeks ago that some day he would have a normal sized bed, and maybe sheets. And maybe he would also change into pajamas at night.

This apparently rocked his world. "No. I just want a sleeping mat and sleeping bad. And no pajamas!" Poor guy. The idea of transitioning to not being the baby of the family and having to put on pajamas at night might have pushed him over the edge, so I gave up for the moment.

And the last time we tried to put Joe up on the upper bunk, he loved the idea until the sun went down. "I thought I would just rest up here," he said, as he climbed back down.

But last night I decided we should try to transition him to his own space again. Maybe we could shuffle the other boys, so he could be on the bottom bunk, at least early in the night.

I got the upper bunk, that has been holding boxes of "treasures" for each boy, ready. And after Jadon showed that he absolutely could not sleep there, being about eight inches too long, and Isaiah showed that he was about three inches too long, Joe eagerly climbed up.

"I love this bed! I am SO happy!"

Will he stay in that bed all night? Fall off or climb down because he misses Phil? We shall see.

I Go Away and Much Is Changed

After a restless night, I woke up, made bread and stew, and headed out at 9:15 for a mom's coffee with some friends. I almost turned around as I drove up our road: Phil had a busy day scheduled, and I felt nervous about abandoning him. The number of things that could go wrong kept adding up.

But I drove on, and spent about two hours visiting with all the ladies and then stayed another five and a half hours just sitting around talking and relaxing. The difference between the tension I felt on the way and my relaxed state on the way back could not have been more striking.

And I got home to find that all my prayers had been answered. The weather could not have been more perfect: 70 and sunny. Jadon had turned the stew on and it had cooked well (and though the burner was still on low nine hours later, it had not burned!).

Two young ladies had offered to come to help with parge-coating (which we realized on Thursday, after we had scheduled them, has become critical path. We need that done before we do the next step). They were planning to arrive between 9 and 10, and my prayer was that they would arrive in time that they could get set on that before the next group arrived. They must have turned down our road just minutes after I left, because they came at 9:30, right as Phil was done getting everything ready, and they had just started work when the next thing happened. Perfect timing!

We had four guys come out to help Phil lift the windows in place. The first two came and helped Phil move a window bank out. Then came the third and his young son.

The boys were set to entertain the son with train track and blocks down in the building, and they all had a good time.

Then the fourth guy showed up, and they got the windows in place in the hour and a half before some guys had to leave, and they set the French doors roughly in place, too. Perfect timing again!

A bank of windows in one room.

And a second bank of windows, with French doors adjacent, with the other room. And although it looks like a long block right now, when the drywall subdivides, the overall effect will diminish.

Phil was gratified because one of the guys is an architect, and he gave Phil major kudos for the design.

One guy stayed to help with the French doors for several more hours. I don't think it went perfectly, as Phil was still wrestling with them when I got home about 6pm, but they are more or less in place, and hopefully the internet will yield some simple steps to help sticking doors sit better in the framing.

And the girls stayed until almost five, and made excellent progress on the parge-coating. In a few more hours, we should have all the critical path parging done.

So Phil had an excellent day. He made good progress, and was blessed with help. I had an excellent day. I was blessed with a relaxing visit with friends. The boys were helpful and kind, and they had an excellent day. So we watched the happy movie Strictly Ballroom and ate chocolate as a family as a happy end of day celebration.

Goodbye to Some Less Productive Animals

Yesterday afternoon, some neighbors finally came to pick up Babe and her baby, Einstein. We had "sold" them back in May, I think, but a deluge happened right around the pick-up time. And then the neighbors just didn't come back. We had a cloudburst right around the time they were going to pick-up yesterday, and I wondered just how many more months we would need to feed these animals for free (have I mentioned I'm a pessimist?).

Happily the rain clearly shortly and the loading went pretty smoothly and the refuse-to-fatten and pathetic-milker Babe and her runty son Einstein have left. Phil figured it wasn't worth the price to carry them until they reached butchering weight, and as much as I might wish for more grass-fed beef, I can see that down-sizing the herd while we grow more grass does make sense.

It was one of those decisions that felt like I'd be grumpy no matter what. I'd be grumpy paying for hay for a small amount of meat, or grumpy selling two animals for less than we paid for just the mother.

***

Phil has spent a good deal of time the last few days making various arrangements. He'll need to dig a trench pretty soon, so he called for an electrical locate. We want to move the main electrical panel into the barn, where it will be better protected than the exposed plywood where it's been the last four years, so he's at least contacted the person who deals with the green boxes and such. We have a few friends coming down to work tomorrow, and he contacted them all, making sure they carpool or whatever. And more time spent calculating and measuring and figuring and planning. So he's been busy, but not busy in the building. Busy doing things ancillary to the building.

***

I had a sad moment when the midwife called me yesterday to say that my iron levels have come up a bit, but remain low. So I took a bunch of vitamins today, wondering if maybe the issue isn't the iron so much as other vitamins and minerals not allowing the iron to uptake (too low in vitamin C, for example). But that is never a good idea. A handful of supplements, even if not on an empty stomach, is a bit much, so I have been queasy all day. Ugh. I wish it wasn't such a challenge to get that number up!

But we are, I think, ready now for the baby. I have all the needed birth supplies. Our new infant car seat arrived yesterday (our first infant car seat was a hand-me-down, and after all four boys used it, too, we threw it out before we moved). We easily found the box of infant things in our storage area today. Happily, the plastic appeared intact, and there were no mice nests or off-smells. So great after four years! So we have some clothes, some blankets, some disposable diapers (which I will use as long as we have to rely on the laundromat).

And I continue to outgrow maternity clothes. I have always felt like the last month of pregnancy, nothing fits except a circus tent. (It made me laugh when I watched the maternity version of What Not to Wear. They chose a first trimester woman, a second trimester, and a recently post-partum woman. I figured there is no hope for a third trimester woman besides just keeping the enormous belly covered.)

Around the farm, I continue to just wear camis, which keep me cool and make me feel okay about myself, as they cling to the belly all the way around and remind me that I actually do have a body, just with a major addition in the front. But camis aren't really modest or appropriate off the farm (not to mention that, as with all pregnancy clothes, they are now quite stained!). Oh, well. I have been thankful for the cami option so many days thus far, if I have to wear tents a few times from now on, I can deal with that.

Crawl Space Work Continues

Phil has made good progress this week on his crawl space project.

He also drilled through the exterior block at one point.

He's had some fun with soldering. He had a moment on Tuesday where two pieces that should have been easy to separate simply would not. We figure they must have been defective, but that spoiled a mostly happy day.

I think that invisible project is almost done, so that is good.

***

I had a midwife appointment today. I must have been extremely low in iron before, because I realized today that I have more energy than I've had in many weeks. I am no longer narcoleptic, and except for singing on Sunday, I really don't get out of the breath (the midwife said I probably wasn't breathing from my diaphragm, which would explain the lightheadedness). Just to make sure, though, she did another blood draw. Just looking at it, she said, "Oh, this looks much better. Before it was light and rather watery, but this is nice, rich blood."

Besides taking liquid iron, a beet blood builder tablet, and two tablespoons of chlorophyll daily, I've kept up with my pate. The midwife suggested an Asian sandwich, made with pate on bread, then layered with some fermented vegetables (kimchee), cilantro, and meat. It's an unusual combination, but I don't find it offensive. I probably wouldn't opt for it normally, but it certainly feels healthy.

I asked her to try to check where my placenta is located, because with Jadon I had a partial previa (where the placenta covers the birth canal). With Jadon it moved up as the pregnancy progressed, but I would prefer to know about a previa now, because that would necessitate a hospital birth, I believe. It was interesting: she put on her stethoscope. The baby has a distinctive, quick heartbeat. The placenta has an Amy-paced heartbeat, maybe half the speed of the baby's. And where there is no baby heart and no placenta, the space is silent. So it was pretty obvious where the placenta was: on the left hand side, up around my belly button.

***

When I came home from my appointment, the boys were down with Phil in the building. They had pulled out their blocks and train tracks, and had taken up an entire room with intricate track patterns. It's been a long time since they did train tracks under cover: they haven't done much with trains for the last few years, because trying to balance everything on the gravel is a challenge. I always like it when the boys play well together.

Have You Heard of Cronuts?

Phil has continued his work in the crawl space the last few days. The days sort of run together, because I, with a 45" waist, don't even try to get in the crawl space. (Even should I step in, would I be able to get out?) I think he's made fairly good progress, but there have been times of extreme frustration, needing three attempts to accomplish what should have been a straightforward task. He continues to gut it out, fight the fumes (and the headache that results from the fumes). He's done some digging and made multiple shopping trips for this piece and that; he has planned and researched and thought about systems and layout. Little above ground looks different, which is a bit surreal. I can usually go and say, "Wow, great job!" But right now, there's little for me to actually see.

***

We decided, after two days in a row of Belle yielding a quart, that it was time to turn her back in with the herd. The amount of time for the amount of milk was completely disproportionate, and since she has not been bred back, it'll be June at the earliest that she births next year, instead of the more ideal earlier spring. I think she was glad to see the rest of the herd, although they, not being the isolated ones, acted as if they didn't remember her. The boys wish for more milk (Abraham prays for it). We had two cows who should have birthed this year and didn't yet, and one heifer Phil thinks might give birth in the near future. We shall see.

Phil has found cow moving much more swift with Jadon and Isaiah to come along and help. When it's time to move the cows, all four of the boys pile into the truck, and they laugh as Shadow races them to the neighbor's land. (They report that they win.) I appreciate that a move takes maybe a half hour, and not an hour and a half or more.

And, for something totally different, have you heard of cronuts? According to The Week magazine, they are the hot thing in Manhattan, a combination croissant-doughnut. The Week had a recipe this last week, and I tried making them. Even without a doughnut cutter, they were amazing. (I did biscuit-shaped circles, which were mostly okay. The problem is that the doughnut hole helps the entire doughnut fry quickly and thoroughly, which a biscuit has a great expanse in the middle that is slower to heat up. So I had a few in the first batch with some raw dough in the center.)

I don't often expand into the world of haute cuisine, so this was a fun experiment.

Lots of Fumes

Phil was down in the crawlspace most of the day, working on connecting PVC pipe. I expect that was somewhat fulfilling, as he made previous temporary connections permanent. But also somewhat mind-numbing (maybe literally, with the fumes). To permanently connect two pipes, he first had to disconnect them. And since they are designed to be tight, that often required some mallet and chisel action. Once separated, he used a special type of roughener, almost like sandpaper, to grind the shiny exterior away, from both sides of the coupling. Then came a purple acid to etch the PVC, followed by the rubber-cement-like clear adhesive. Once both parts were painted, he shoved them together quickly and then let them sit for some minutes while the chemical reaction permanently joined the two pieces.

At one point, he opened the door, yelled at us to come quickly, and dashed back down to the site. I think he had been working on a piece but couldn't get a good grip to place the pipe properly, which he didn't realize until all the parts were acidified and adhesived. Since the window is less than thirty seconds, even with all our scrambling, we had no hope of being there quickly enough.

Apparently, though, we aren't the only ones who have dealt with minor disasters like that. I think he simply needed to sand off the failed attempt and reapply; the desperate rush ended up not being necessary, and within five minutes the parts were all in place and all was well.

By the end of the day, Phil said he felt a bit high from all the fumes; his hands were chewed to bits, like being tormented with thousands of paper cuts; and he was physically tired from jumping in and out of the crawl space all day long. But he made good progress.

***

Although I have mostly taken a better late than early approach to education with the boys, I have wanted to see if Joe is ready to start printing. We worked on F yesterday, a simple line down and two across, but when his line down was not perfectly straight, and his lines across had any variation or jerk, he put his head down, in tears. And somehow reassurance that I've been writing for the better part of thirty years, and he has been writing for about thirty seconds, just didn't comfort him.

At some point we had a little chalkboard. I don't know if it made the move and has been in storage these last four years, or if it broke at some point back in Boulder. In any case, there is no little chalkboard at hand. But we do have a Post-It brand 2-in-1, used by businesses for lectures, with a large whiteboard on one side and large paper on the other, which can form an easel when folded.

Pulling that out was a huge hit for all four boys. Joe was willing to attempt an E and an F last night, but after about two each, I made him head to bed. "Can I do it tomorrow," he asked. Of course.

As soon as he woke this morning, he walked in to see me. "Can I write now? You said I could tomorrow, and it's tomorrow." Never mind that he had no breakfast, no bathroom break, and had barely managed to open his eyes. Of course.

And he persevered throughout the day. I did about ten minutes with him before he was done. Later Isaiah walked him through the alphabet up to M and N. Joe has a complex about M and N. The angles scare him, I think. But he loved the ease of C and D.

So no more workbook for a time. We'll stick with foot-high letters in purple dry-erase marker and call it good.

Isaiah did a full-sized drawing of a girl, after the style of Lichtenstein (the pop artist who painted in comic book style, with sections of dots, as if the paintings were coming from a newspaper print room). Isaiah's girl looked, perhaps, more like she had the measles or the smallpox, but it was a creative effort. Good for him.

Doors Aren't Windows

Phil started working on the double doors today.

They are not like windows. Windows have fins around the exterior to attach, and then require some form of finishing later. Doors ... they come pre-finished somehow. So how do you attach the door to the doorway without ruining the finishing? After putting down wood to make the rough opening about the right size, that's the question Phil now gets to figure out. How to attach the door?

Better him than me. My mind goes blank when I have to look at any type of schematic.

Third Time's the Charm

Although the thermometer said only 86 today, the scorching sun and the extreme humidity meant that it was hard to keep the body's core temperature down. Phil needed to move the cows to the neighbor's land to the south, and he did it in stages, soaking through clothes and showering off the sweat and grass after every stage. He ate popsicles, but he said his core temperature didn't finally come down until late in the day, when he filled the tub with cold water and just sat until he felt normal again.

He combined the two calves with the rest of the herd. They weren't really sure about where to go as the herd moved into the neighbor's land, but with a little quick footwork he managed to direct them where they needed to go. I think they'll be far happier in the long run, not roaming free or penned to keep them from going to the neighbor's lawn.

It was about 5:30 before that project was finally done. Happily, he spent the next two and a half hours very profitably—he got the final single window in, the window that has twice before given him fits. He had to scrape away adhesive stuck to the bottom of the window from a previous attempt. This time, we dry set the window before squirting the adhesive. Once we knew for sure that it fit, then he pulled the window out and put down final adhesive.

It was interesting to watch: he put in about fourteen shims on the inside, every few inches along the vertical parts. He said that he had not shimmed the previous two windows quite as well, as he hadn't fully understood the directions. This doesn't make a difference from waterproofing, but the shims do help keep the window square, which ensures that the window will be able to open and close easily. In any case, I'm glad he had two practice windows before he installed this one in the direction of the prevailing storms. He did that on purpose.

What a great relief to have that stinker done!

A Date I've Been Awaiting

Although the circumference of my waist varies some based on the position of the baby, I measured today about 42.5". That's not much different from mid-June. But with the advent of September, now when people ask when I'm due, I can say cheerily, "Next month!" That is far better than when I was asked in mid-June, by people clearly expecting me to say something like, "Any day now," and have to respond, "Oh, sometime in mid-October."

Even better: although when October begins, I can say, for the whole month, "I'm in the zone," I am happy to be not yet completely enormous. I hope September passes very slowly.

***

Phil and I had an interesting conversation after our guests left yesterday. He said, "You know, the farm is really pretty much me right now." Knowing how behind we are on our mowing, how we have pallets that held boards in one place, and broken concrete blocks in another place, and insulation not yet installed here, and a pile of construction trash there, that seemed at first to be a bit of a depressing thought.

But he expanded on that. One of the little issues I've had, when I stop to think about it, is that we are not like The Good Life Nearings, or like a friend we had in Boulder. They have workrooms so exquisitely organized that they outline their tools with paint, so they can easily hang things back up or note what is missing. Doesn't that sound dreamy?

For us, we (usually) get our tools back to their storage spots after use (Phil is probably better about this than I am). But the storage spots themselves are not terribly orderly. "I'm just not that anal," said Phil. "I don't think I'll ever be like that."

I don't know that I would say he's inherently messy, though maybe we both are. We keep our bills paid, and we can (usually) locate what we need in short order. Part of the messiness may be a lack of decent organizing tools, or a basic lack of space. But even with more space, are our areas that much more clean? Probably not.

It was an interesting thing to realize, though, that as much as I might admire the cleanness of IKEA's lines in their catalog, or the perfectly organized pegboard of our friends, that will probably not be in our future.

So we celebrate what we're good at (creative thinking, perseverance), and just try to make sure the hammers and shovels come in out of the rain.