Today was an awkward stressful sort of day where a lot of things went wrong.

For example the electric company contracted a tree cutting service to trim branches from around the power lines, but instead they came in my yard while we were asleep and chopped down (at the base) my five foot tall red leaf maple tree that Rosie and I planted a couple years ago when Ada was born.

They also moved my picnic table and left it against the garage, put the kids’ swings up on top of the swing set, and left my gate open so that the ducks waddled out towards the road.

Awesome.  Thanks Wright Tree Service for your excellent tree service.

Then at Home Depot someone apparently hit the side door of my van with their car door hard enough to leave a door outline dent.  It’s not a huge huge dent, but it’s big enough that I could see it when my van was parked across the road.

I love people.

The kids also fought all freaking day long.  I’m pulling out my hairs over here!

But seeing as I don’t intend this to be a blog of not-so-awesome things all the time (I mean it’s ok sometimes, keeping it real and everything) I should probably post something more pleasant.

Tonight’s pleasantry brought to you via Instagram, taken over the past week.

Beautiful almost summer evenings.

My mom’s two year old pouty face.

My sister doing the girls’ nails on the back porch at my parents’ house.

DUCK FACE!

Lion Cat, rawr.  (Rintoo)

How is Rosie nearly six?

Childhood imagination:  Band at 5 tomorrow.  Dragon Caves.  Free piece of paper to read.

Ada’s sign on the left:  Scribbles and an assisted happy face.

Ada with her giant swollen infection filled tonsils, still singing her heart out into a plastic microphone.

Bonnets.  Ada.  Duck Face.  A long series:

(LOL!)

Delightfully awkward (and delicious) strawberry from our garden:

A giant slug with leopard print.

My Gus kitty.

Abby, always at my feet.  (She has cat fur on her nose, haha!)

Rosie’s block castle that Ada didn’t knock over.

And finally, my garden this evening.  In progress…planting plants and seeds, weeding, filling with compost and dirt, rearranging the stones around the boxes…

Lots of work but I would spend all day every day out there if I could.

Note the duck.  I put up a fence this year.  Last year the ducks foraged through my entire garden.

I’m 100% sure that ducks see in color because they knew exactly when a tomato or strawberry was perfectly ripe.  They wouldn’t touch it a second before it was ready.

This year: Duck proof fence.  Take that!

Let’s just hope they don’t eat those new flowers I left on the picnic table overnight.  I just thought of that.  Crap.

By the way, you can follow me on Instagram under Pepper44 if you want.  People always ask me my screen name and I sometimes suck at replying to notes, so there you go.

Ok, reading in bed now for me.  It’s almost midnight.

This is a great blog entry.  One in which I admit to drugging my toddler and leaving my five year old alone with strange men outside a diner.  In other words, it’s a post about a bad day.  A really, really, REALLY bad day.  In hindsight it’s a tiny bit funny.  Just a teeny tiny bit.

 

We tried to go to meet friends from my April 2010 due date club yesterday in Asheville and it was a complete and total fail.  My due date club (from my pregnancy with Ada) is awesome and the ladies on the east coast have been planning a meet-up for months now.  I’ve been super excited to go to it.

Ada was finally well enough to go after having infected tonsils this weekend, so I packed late at night then slept for a few hours before getting the girls up at 4 in the morning to hop in the car and go. Tyler had to work.  It was just the girls and me going alone.  I’ve never taken them on a big trip alone before, but certainly it would be fine…right?

 

 

 

Watching Scooby Doo peacefully, before everything went wrong on the trip.

 

 

 

The trip started out fine except that they didn’t fall back asleep like planned. (Of course, right?) So they watched a movie instead and everyone was happy.

We got to the TN border in good time and my Garmin was telling me we’d be in Asheville in only a couple more hours.  Exciting!  I was thinking this was going to be an easy trip, and I was so glad I’d decided to come alone with the girls and faced my traveling anxiety.

At the Kentucky Tennessee border I-75 was closed right over Jellico mountain due to a collapse in the road. I’d heard that on the news but figured small detour, no big deal right?

I did not realize that detours were this big of a deal when traveling.  I have one brief memory of traveling in the Jellico mountain area witih my parents as a small child and hearing them upset that there was a detour at Jellico.  That was in the back of my mind, but I assumed it was just my dad being uptight like usual.  A detour couldn’t be that bad!  We would listen to music and smile through it, then we would be right back on the highway and to Asheville without losing much time at all.

Hi, I haven’t been an adult for very long and sometimes I still have to learn things the hard way.

I cheerfully took this no-big-deal-detour and it turned out to be 45 minutes of long winding roads up and down and around Jellico and Pine Mountain. The road wound around, up, down, over, and through the mountains for 26 miles.

TWENTY SIX EFFING MILES PEOPLE.

Now 26 miles may not sound that long to you, but 26 miles in fog and pouring rain along mountain roads in traffic in the car with small children is like the equivalent of pure hell.  There were huge semi trucks trying to drive on these roads with everyone else!

We have roads like that in the part of Kentucky where I live too, but they usually don’t have long lines of crawling traffic on them, let alone 18 wheelers roaring around hair pin curves on the edge of a mountainside in heavy rain and fog.

That alone was bad enough, and I was beginning to question the cheerful attitude I’d had about this detour.

And then Rosie got car sick.

My vomit phobia, the middle of nowhere in the rain and fog, no cell phone reception to call my mom and cry, and no GPS satellite reception to know how much further we had to go.  A barfing terrified kid wanting to be comforted while I drove the car, a crying toddler, a never ending long line of traffic, and not a single place to stop.

Awful!

Seriously, these are the things I have anxiety riddled nightmares about.

The safety of home seemed like a million desperate light years away during the next few hours.

Finally we got to LaFollette, TN at the end of that long and hellish road. We hit it right at morning rush hour. Except I think LaFollette has a population of like 7,000. Small town. The entire town was out on their way to work and school that Monday morning.

I stopped at the first tiny gas station I saw to see if they had any Dramamine for Rosie, but they didn’t. An old man tried to convince me that Pepto Bismol would work just fine, because they had that. Then a couple other old men squeezed in the closet sized store to get coffee and they started passing around Duck Face, who Rosie had carried inside.  (Did I mention the duck went on our trip with us?  She rides in a dog crate, but I’d taken her out for Rosie to hold in an attempt to calm Rosie down earlier when she started feeling sickly.  The duck is so tame that it wants to be with us where ever we go if it can.  It absolutely loved riding in Rosie’s lap in the car!)

I didn’t want to buy Pepto Bismal so got the duck back and left to look for another gas station one of the guys had pointed out down the street, which thankfully did have Dramamine.

Five dollars later I thought we were saved, I was so relieved!  I made Rosie take one tablet even though she really didn’t want to. Before we drove two seconds she was puking it back up. She’s never, ever gotten car sick before.  Then I really started to panic.  I was holding out hope that Dramamine would be my savior for the remainder of the trip and all would be well and good after that.   I don’t know if she got sick because she got up super early and only drank water and didn’t eat anything, then we hit those mountain roads? But we drive through rural mountain roads all the time around here with no issue. I just don’t know what happened to her stomach on this trip.
Then in the middle of Rosie puking up the Dramamine and sobbing Ada started screaming that she was going to pee her pants. I stopped at the next driveway, which happened to be a diner that looked like something straight out of 1950. It even had the original Pepsi signs, original old wood floors, etc.  I don’t mean it was decorated to be a 1950′s diner.  It just hadn’t changed since 1950.  I think it was actually called The Diner.

Rosie wouldn’t get out of the car, she was just sitting there heaving into a red solo cup and sobbing with Face Duck happily chattering away on a towel in her lap. (Thank you motion sick Duggars for the red solo cup idea!)

Ada was loudly screaming that she had to pee. I was desperately trying to figure out what to do and how to take Rosie inside the diner to the bathroom without her puking all over the restaurant, which would be traumatic and embarrassing to say the least. These two guys–middle aged good ol’ boys both wearing white undershirts, one with suspenders, and both smoking–who had been standing out front of the diner near my car came over to see what the commotion was.

They were what I call down home people.  Please tell me someone else knows what I mean by that.  Tyler makes fun of me and has no clue what kind of people I’m talking about.

You know, nice people, genuinely friendly, from a small town/rural area where everyone knows and looks out for everyone else.  Tyler has only lived in a city and just cannot grasp what I mean, but everyone in the town where my mom grew up is like this.  It’s a wonderful sort of place to live.  I could tell LaFollete was probably that sort of place just based on the looks of that diner and the people in it.

Out of complete desperation I left those men outside comforting Rosie as she sat in the car while I took Ada inside to the potty.

The old bathroom was so funny. The toilet was on a tiny platform in the corner, up four huge steps from the sink area. It was literally a throne.  Ada was delighted. I should have taken a picture, but I was too flustered by everything else.

I rushed back outside worried about Rosie.  One of the men was holding Duck Face with a huge grin on his face. He only had one front tooth.  I swear they were like angels at that moment.  Comforting and reassuring men in overalls saved me from a distressing situation.

I can’t believe I left Rosie alone with strange men, but small town and nice people…I guess it’s one thing about quirky rural Kentucky and Tennessee that’s good. Not that I ever want such a situation to happen again, but I was thankful those guys were there because Rosie really wasn’t able to get out and walk into a diner at that moment and I didn’t want to leave her totally alone, sick and terrified in the car.

It looked like those two guys probably stood outside of The Diner at 8 o’clock every morning drinking coffee and smoking.  Didn’t seem likely they would hurt or kidnap a vomiting five year old girl and a quacking duck in broad daylight in the hustle and bustle of morning rush hour, in front of a diner they frequent daily.  That’s good logic for desperate times right?  (Did I mention I never want to attempt traveling alone with the girls ever again?)
We started driving once more after those guys gave us directions to continue the detour through town and find the interstate at the end of it.  Rosie was screaming that she just wanted to get out of the car and to a house. We were closer to our house than Asheville by an hour or so, and since I didn’t know if she was car sick or germy sick we just went back home.  I was completely and totally stressed to the max by that point. Incapable of making another rational decision if my life depended on it.

The best part is that we had to go back through that horrible detour along the mountain roads.  I made Rosie close her eyes and try to sleep through it.  She didn’t throw up any more thankfully. Then I made record time going 90 mph on the interstate while Rosie threw an epic and irrational tantrum about not getting to see her friend Atlee at the meet-up we were missing in Asheville, complete with kicking and throwing things.

Ada had taken 1/2 a dramamine tablet and she was out COLD. (Ada asked for some medicine when I gave the tablet to Rosie, and in my great distress I went ahead and gave her half hoping she would fall asleep so I would have one less kid to worry about. Rosie was more than I could handle at that point.)  Ada was fine on the entire trip, surprisingly.  Rosie didn’t throw up at all on the trip home, she was too busy screaming in pure anger about turning around and not going to Asheville.
Once we finally got home Rosie screamed and cried for another hour about how angry she was at me for bringing us back home.  Then she started begging for food. She was completely fine after that, not sick at all. I promised her I would take her to the movies to make up for not getting to go to the meet up. We’re both extremely disappointed. I was so freaking excited that Ada was better and we were going to make it.

Clearly fate did not want me to go, for some reason.  First Ada got unexpectedly really ill, then when we tried to drive there Rosie randomly got car sick and we took the detour from hell.  I even wasted an entire tank of gas.

 

Want to know something kind of funny?  When I got home there was a two foot long skinny strip of magnet scrap stuck to the driver’s door of my van.  Tyler asked me where it came from and I have absolutely no idea.  I never really left the van parked anywhere.  We were in it the entire time except for when I ran Ada into the bathroom and when we stepped into the gas station for three seconds to look for Dramamine.  Weird.

Tyler took the magnet and in Sharpie he wrote on it, “I went to Hell and back, and all I got was this ugly magnet.”

Then he stuck it back on my van.

 

After I described my LaFollete, Tennessee experience to Tyler in great detail he didn’t completely believe me.  Now I’ve sworn that we’re taking a weekend vacation there.  It looked like a nice place to live.  I want to stay in the mountain lodge I saw on the detour (McCloud’s or something like that) and eat BBQ ribs on Saturday night at The Diner.  I bet those two angel men will be there.  Before we drive down there again I am loading Rosie up on Dramamine just in case!

Alas, I have survived the wisdom tooth removal.

Barely.

I psyched myself up beforehand so I wasn’t even that nervous.  The night before I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink after midnight, and I dreamed realistically that Ada was unwrapping foil covered chocolates and stuffing the candy in my mouth.  I was like, “Om nom nom this is so delicious.  I can’t swallow or I won’t be able to have my surgery.  But it’s so goooood…”

Then I woke up and it was time to go.  Tyler took me to the oral surgeon and my mom took the girls over to her house.

When I went back into the surgery room it just looked like a regular dentist chair.  Anticlimatic much?

They put that gas over my nose, which I didn’t like because it smelled like vomit.  Gross.  I didn’t realize they were going to use the gas, I thought they were just going to give me something through an IV.

I guess the gas was to make the IV less scary, except I’m not the least bit bothered by needles.  If I ever need this again I’m skipping the gas!  It didn’t have much effect, it just made me feel really heavy all over.

 

 

This is when the unfortunate panic inducing part happened.

They gave me the IV, and the dentist put the drugs in it to make me lose consciousness.  You’re still awake technically, you’re just not aware any longer.  I watched him inject something into my IV and I wasn’t able to see anymore. I don’t know if my eyes were open or closed, but everything was black.  Except I could still hear them.  I could still feel everything that was happening.

I felt him give me a shot in my gums and I tried to move, but I couldn’t.  I tried to say something, but I couldn’t make any sounds.  I was blind and immobilized.  I was horrified! It was like I was in this deep, dark tunnel.  It was warm and soft there, and heavy, and I couldn’t get out.  I felt him give me six shots.  I was laying there panicking trying to force my body listen to my brain.  I was terrified that I would hear and feel him removing my teeth and not be able to say anything.

Finally I managed to make a noise.  In my head it was a loud moan, but it may have been different out loud.  I heard the dentist say, “Oh hang on she needs more propofol!”  Then they poked me and I moaned again and I heard him exclaim, “Even more?”

The next thing I remember I could hear the nurse talking to me.  I felt her removing my IV and it pinched a little.  Then I was sitting up on a bed in another room with my glasses on.  According to Tyler she gave us after care instructions and I told them prednisone makes me feel like a boss.  I have no memory of any of that.  The next thing I remember I was sitting in the car, but I don’t even really remember riding home.

Tyler said the nurse told him that I had to have more than double the normal dose of propofol for my size.

I don’t go down without a fight.  My insomina even beats out levels of propofol high enough to kill Michael Jackson.

It’s funny in hindsight.  It was not funny when I was conscious and paralyzed.  That’s the stuff nightmares are made of right there.  I never thought that would happen to me.

I have red hair.  I’ve read before that redheads react differently to pain and anesthesia.  Maybe that has something to do with my experience.

 

The recovery after the surgery has kind of sucked.  The one impacted infected tooth they removed left the worst spot.  My jaw bone is all bruised along my cheek and it throbs.  Eating is hard and I have been really hungry.  For the first two days every time I moved my mouth would bleed.  The gauze felt like soggy tampons stuffed in my cheeks, but without it I was swallowing salty penny flavored blood.  The first night I drooled red saliva everywhere and woke up encrusted.  Really gross.

The bleeding has finally stopped now, on day three.  But I have some minor swelling today and more throbbing than before.

The entire time I’ve just been taking ibuprofen for pain.  I’m also taking an antibiotic because of the infection that was under the impacted tooth.  I had three teeth removed in total, so both sides of my mouth are sore.  I’m terrified of dry sockets.  I’m so paranoid I’ll knock the clot out.  The impacted tooth area periodically oozes puss, which is absolutely disgusting.

I cannot wait until they are all healed.  The one good thing I can think of about wisdom teeth removal is that your wisdom teeth never grow back.  I’m never doing this again in my life.

And you know what?  I completely forgot to ask the dentist if I could keep my teeth!  Darn it!

 

 

Bahaha.  Misery.

I spent the night at my parents’ house the first night so my mom could help me watch the girls. I still had to take care of Ada all night, which was hard.  I came back to my house the next evening and I had a lot of cleaning up to do.  Tyler didn’t do a very good job taking care of the pets or helping me get caught up on chores.  The hard part is that my mouth throbs and oozes if I move around too much or talk a lot.  Taking care of the girls by myself has been hard.  I’m hoping I’ll feel a lot better tomorrow.  It will be a full three days since the surgery.

Now for some things cute and fluffy, and not teeth related.  Brought to you by the world of Instagram!

The girls played with a neighbor girl at my parents’ house while I was putting frozen peas on my swollen jaws.  My parents’ court is very safe and the kids can just go out and run and play.  They loved it.  Our street is…not safe…at all.  There are also very few kids that I would want my girls to play with here.

That’s my mom with Ada.  Ada and my mom look exactly alike, which is weird because I look like my dad.

This little girl was so incredibly sweet.  I want to take Rosie back over to my parents’ this summer so they can play together.  She’s 8 and Rosie is (almost) 6, but they got along fine.

You can see Rosie way ahead up there.  And yes, my just turned two year old is huge and can race on her new birthday scooter already.

Of course she’s still my baby when she needs a break from her new scooter.

Did anyone else play with these elves and read the books as a kid?  I loved them!  My mom still had my whole set!

I think she’s called Herself the Elf.

These next pictures are from today, back at my house.

Rosie’s eyes are bugging out of her head in this one, ahahaha!

She still carries Bitty Baby absolutely everywhere.

Ginny the Old English Game bantam sits down inside the feeder to eat undisturbed by the bigger hens.

My Silkie hens are so broody that you can just stick chicks and eggs under them.

Benny and June!

Duck Face grows rapidly!  We had to put him/her outside with the heat lamp because it was just too messy and smelly in the rubbermaid tote inside now that (s)he’s a bit larger.

I found out that this is an Ancona duckling.  They are considered critical, just a step above endangered, and they are a heritage duck breed.

This is a silver laced Sebright bantam.  (Please ignore the random yellow coop wall.  I’m in the process of painting everything red and white.)

Abby sunning herself.  She looks small in this picture but she’s actually a 60 pound lab mix.

Ok.  Aching jaws need to be iced or something.  Time to read books in bed.

 

Rosie has her speech evaluation tomorrow at our local elementary school.

I’m kind of nervous!  I wonder what it will entail.  Rosie is nervous too, more so than I am.

She has trouble saying her R’s.  They are like W’s.  She also can’t say the letter J, she says a D sound instead.  Like “dam” for “jam” or “poil” for “pearl”.  “Girl” sounds like “gal”.  She’s improving slightly as she gets older, but she still has such a baby voice compared to her peers.  I don’t want it to be something that she gets made fun of over later on.  It’s most noticeable when she’s reading out loud.  That’s what finally motivated me to seek the opinion of the speech therapist just in case.

The speech therapist told me that they only offer therapy to the very worst cases in public school.  The preliminary evaluation will tell her if Rosie needs to be evaluated further for free speech therapy at school, or if she should get private speech therapy (out of pocket, yikes) for a mild issue, or if we should wait another year or two for her to grow out of her speech issues.

On the phone the speech therapist told me that the major speech issues they treat are ones that interfere with learning in the classroom.  I’m not sure Rosie’s speech is that terrible, it’s just a bit wonky.  I would be surprised if her speech was found to be poorly enough to be approved for public school speech therapy, but I’ll gladly take the speech therapist’s free opinion of what we should do.

Just to clear up any confusion we’re still homeschooling, but Rosie can get public school services like speech therapy the same as any student in the district.  I had to call the speech therapist and schedule the evaluation a few months in advance.  If she were in a classroom at school her teacher would set it up.  If Rosie does qualify for their speech therapy then I would take her to it and pick her up just like I would for any appointment.

 

I kept thinking that she would start talking more clearly at any time, but it just isn’t happening.  I have no idea why.  I started getting concerned when she couldn’t sound out words. She sounds out words and writes them really wrong–like she would mispronounce them.  For example if she were to sound out the word “reading” she would write “weeding”.  Speaking of reading, she is doing really well with it. She can read and comprehend books like Frog and Toad, and she’s starting to read harder books like Junie B. Jones.  (I dislike Junie B. Jones quite a bit for her bad example of behavior and I banned it from our house, but it’s crept back in.)  She reads books to herself every night in bed while falling asleep and then tells me about them the next morning.  It’s crazy how she’s suddenly so much older.  She’s wanting to spend more and more time off by herself reading and writing, and playing games on the iPad.

 

 

Rosie broke her glasses today.  We ran into each other in the hallway.  I was carrying a huge indoor slide we have, that one shaped like a school bus.  Rosie was running down the hall.  She fell under me and snapped the ear piece off of her glasses so hard it scratched her face and made it bleed.

She was utterly devastated that she’d broken her glasses.  She sobbed and sobbed.

We went to the eye place to see about a replacement.  They were under warranty for a full year!  But they had to order the frames and it will take at least seven business days before they come in, so in the mean time the lady frankensteined another mismatched ear piece onto Rosie’s pair so that she could still wear them.

Ada tried on every pair of baby glasses they had while we were waiting.  Most of them looked ridiculous, except for this one pair.  If they weren’t so expensive I would have bought them just because Ada and I both loved them so much.  (Red stuff on her nose is from a fall down the one step out the back door…)

 

 

Bad eyesight runs in Tyler’s family.  Tyler got glasses as a preschooler.  I didn’t take Rosie to the eye doctor as a baby and I regret that in hindsight.  I made Ada an appointment for April 11th.  If by some chance she needs glasses we are so getting this pair!  I’m a little nervous about how the appointment will go.  What if she won’t let the eye doctor near her?

 

We’ve been spending all day, every day outside.  This weather!

Rosie is tending to her garden of strawberries.  She has two 4×4 beds of them.  They send out runners and make new plants every year.  One bed is less full than the other and I’m thinking about condensing them all to one bed.  I think they can be quite close together.  Or maybe I’ll just plant the green beans around the strawberries in the less full bed?  Google told me I could do that.

Here’s the fuller bed.  I just weeded it and pulled out all of the fall leaves that had piled up in there.  The strawberries were happy to see daylight again!  I’m going to mulch them as soon as I dig up the cash to buy mulch.

 

 

This green house I found at Tractor Supply is awesome.  It works!  It’s warm and wet inside, perfect for my sprouting seeds.

(Warm and wet inside. I can hear Tyler making an inappropriate joke in my head.)

 

 

We did something great today.  We found out that we could consolidate our $7,500 of credit card debt by rolling in into our small second mortgage and refinancing the whole shebang into a principle and interest 15 year low fixed rate loan.  We did it through the credit union so there were no closing costs or any fees.  Now we have no credit card debt!!!  NEVER AGAIN!  The main reason it accumulated in the first place was when Tyler lost his job while I was pregnant with Ada.  We paid bills with our savings and bought food and gas with the credit card.  Desperate times.  Hope that never happens again.

I feel such relief to have it gone.  We still have to pay off the second mortgage, but it’s so organized now.  Just one payment every month that’s even lower than all of the minimum payments we were making before on several cards, and lower than the interest only payment we were making before on the scary adjustable rate second mortgage we had.  This is a total win-win situation beyond what I could have imagined.

Now we only have our main mortgage, our small second mortgage, our low car payment for the van, and our basic household bills.  This is very good.

Plus paying off those credit cards will really raise our credit scores, which in turn will enable us to get a better mortgage rate and amount for a farm/house when we are finally able to move.  It’s looking like that won’t be until after Tyler is hired on and we’ve saved some money.  I’m trying not to think about it. Maybe it will go by fast.  Hopefully I will be complaining about cramming a third kid into this tiny house…

 

I think it’s supposed to be rainy and in the 60′s this weekend.  Maybe our random brief summer has ended and we’ll get back to regular spring.

I’m a bit sad about that.

 

Rosie looks a lot different without her glasses on.  I love this picture of us together though.  We have almost the same color eyes.  At least I was able to sneak in one little part of my DNA.  Tyler’s DNA took over the rest of Rosie’s appearance.

 

 

 

We went to see the house (linked in the previous entry) this afternoon.

It was farther than we thought it would be.  We drove past Toyota, where Tyler works, and kept driving down the state highway out in the country.  We finally got to the tiny town and drove through it, then we still had to go five more miles.  Two on the same state highway, and three and a half more miles on another road.

We finally got to the turn off road and it was tiny. There was a sign noting that we’d arrived in a new “town”.

It was called Oddville.  (Seriously!)

I don’t know how to explain the topography of Kentucky easily.  It’s like rolling hills that give way to small steep hills known as “the knobs” because they resemble knobs jutting up out of the ground.  The knobs give way to mountains.  Well this house’s land didn’t appear to be knobby on the google map and in the real estate pictures, but it was.  The upper ridge of the knobs was where this tiny road ran across.  On both sides were gorgeous hills and fields with cattle, all laid out like green patchwork as far as the eye could see.  Kentucky is really a beautiful place!

The road was so tiny and curvy for those 3.5 miles.  I could feel my hopes about this house working out sinking quickly.  It’s scary to drive down a tiny road high up on the hill ridge in winter weather, or in heavy rain, or in the dark at night.  There are no street lights or sidewalks, or even lines on the road of course.

Finally we got to the driveway of the house.  As soon as I saw the driveway I knew this property was not something we would purchase. My stomach sank.  Disappointment, yet again.

This is it?  Tyler exclaimed.  I am not driving down there.  We won’t make it.  Let’s just turn around and go home.  We can go to the Chinese food buffet…

We’ve come this far, I told him.  We have to drive down it.  Just do it.  If we get stuck we can call AAA.

I insisted on it.  Curiosity killed the cat and everything, you know.

He gave me an exasperated look, but he carefully started driving down.

This was our view.  The house is that little white square in the middle.  The driveway was very long, 1,500 feet according to the real estate website.  “Very private country home” indeed.  The steepness does not convey in the Instagram picture.  It was a bit daunting in person.

I wish I’d have made a video of not only the steep winding driveway down into the valley, but also of the hilarious things Tyler was saying.  He thought we were going to die.  You might have noticed this, but in our relationship we’re a case of opposites attract.  He is a bit more cautious than I am when it comes to these sorts of things.

The driveway was practically a vertical twisting descent down the huge hill.  It was gravel and partially washed out in spots from recent rains, leaving holes of thick Kentucky clay mud.  I said a little prayer that we wouldn’t actually get stuck.  Tyler would never let me live that down.

Ada woke up screaming during the five minutes it took us to get down that driveway.  She was hanging forward in her car seat as we bumped and slid down the driveway road.  Tyler was semi-cursing, Rosie was gripping the car with white knuckles, and I was laughing hysterically.

We reached the bottom without major incident, thankfully.  Tyler said that we weren’t going to get out of the car, we would just look from the driveway.

(Yes, I know, it’s like he’s never met me or something.)

We got out of the car and Tyler said we could just look from the yard.

I looked from the yard.

The cool wind whipped against our faces while we stood outside in silence for a few moments.

Me, imagination and tingly senses running wild.  Tyler, perhaps in stunned silence.

It felt happy.  I could immediately tell that despite the eerie appearance of the house it was once a place where a family was happy.

In addition to that, and this will sound weird I am aware, I also sensed a lonely man.  I don’t know why, just a hint of loss as if time had moved on and he remained as the only person who cared about this place.  Happy memories, but sadness that his prime (and the house’s prime also) had passed.

I don’t think it was just imagination, it was just…a matter of fact feeling.  Plain and clear as anything.

I went up on the front porch and Tyler entered a state of mild panic as I swung the front door open.  How could I just stand in the yard and not explore the inside?

Not possible.  Not possible at all.

I had to go in and see every detail.  I had to take a moment to imagine who used to live there, what their lives were like. Wonder where they were now. Then imagine what it would be like if we lived there…

Tyler begged me not to step inside.  What if an alarm goes off?  What if the police come racing down here?  What if the neighbors or owners shoot us for trespassing?

I laughed.

This is an abandoned house Tyler, what part of this house looks like it has a functioning alarm system? If the police magically appear from thenearest town 45 minutes away and race down that horrible driveway it would be the best video I’ve ever made. 

And I highly doubt anyone would shoot us, I comforted him.  Most people don’t shoot at pseudo terrifying dads driving bad ass mini vans with their kids in tow.  The worst they can do is ask us to leave. We’ll say we were considering buying the place and wanted to scope it out, you’ll apologize, and I’ll laugh and bat my eye lashes.  No big deal.

He sighed, so I took that as permission to step inside without further admonishment.

I pushed the front door the rest of the way open and stepped inside.

There were rooms to the right and left, and immediately in front of us was a set of stairs leading up.

I think even Tyler, who is oblivious to most minor details, felt that the house was a happy place.  Once inside he walked around without any more anxiety.

There was an incessant beeping coming from the room to the left, so I walked in.  On the mantel there was a smoke detector laying face down, next to a face down carbon monoxide detector.  Neither had batteries.  Over on the wall there was a thermostat flashing scrambled lettering.  That was the beeping noise.  Not an alarm system, Tyler!  But a sign that the electricity must be turned on.  A sign of life.  It wasn’t totally abandoned.

To the right was a living room.  Pleasant, small.  Dirty and old, but with a little imagination…

The floors were original hardwood.  Clearly very old, broken and chipped badly, smashed in some spots.

Straight ahead through that doorway next to the fireplace was a dining room, perhaps.  Through that was the kitchen.

The kitchen took my breath away.

It was quaint.  Oh the imagination!

It was also kind of horrible, if I was going to actually consider living there.

There was nothing else in the kitchen aside from a space for a dining room table directly behind me.

See that tree stump on the floor in front of the sink?  That had come through the window, maybe in a storm?  The window was broken, but mysteriously there was no glass on the floor.

To the left there was a bedroom, and the bathroom.  Surprisingly the bathroom was semi-new with a new plastic tub/shower combo, newer tile flooring, and a weird tiny toilet that was filled with something very disgusting and molded.  It looked like molded vomit, so I ran away without taking any pictures of the bathroom.

I went upstairs next.  The stairs had a small landing at the top.  To the left and right were bedrooms.

One room was painted dark red.

It had a door in it that led to an attic room in the eaves.  Pretty awesome!  (Someone even cared enough to insulate it.)

I heard Rosie scream and I quickly rushed to her in the second bedroom.

She was screaming because it was perfect.  She loved it.  She wanted to live in it right this second and never leave it.

It was clearly a little girl’s room, with the floor painted light green and the baseboards light purple.  The walls were bright white.

The floor had this cute design around the edges.

Happy.  This house was full of happy feelings, I’m telling you.

Tyler was ready to leave at this point, but I hadn’t had a chance to look around outside.

There still remained the unresolved mystery of what that weird little building built into the hillside could be.

A spring house?  A root cellar? Or…?

Don’t open that door, Tyler weakly commanded. Amy….

I flung the door open in anticipation.  It was my turn to scream.

IT WAS A CHICKEN COOP.

It even had freaking sky lights build into it.  A billion nest boxes lined the walls.

It was perfect and I wanted to live there now.  Right this second.

 Built into the hillside it would be cool in the summer and insulated in the winter, and safe from digging predators.

Who built this?  Where were they now?  I loved them.  I mean really, this was perfect for my chickens!

There was a big barn too, you can see it behind the chicken coop.  It was a giant three sided run in shed to be specific.

The land was fenced with an electric fence.  I tested it with a long blade of grass–no little buzz, it wasn’t charged.  I slipped through and peeked in the barn.  Perfect, more perfect.

If only it wasn’t so far away.  If only the driveway wasn’t so terrifying–I think we’d have to park at the top and ride ATV’s down to the house if we lived there.  A vehicle couldn’t make it up or down that steep hill in any kind of weather but sunny….and even barely then.

If only there was more flat or gently rolling land.  There was no place to build a new house, or even a place to put the girls’ swing set.  The hills were all too steep and knobby.

Disappointing, because while this place was awesome it was clearly not someplace we could live.  There was nothing practical about it except for the fact that it cost $50,000…and after looking at it I don’t even think the land is worth $50,000.

The house was definitely not worth $50,000.

Oh but I loved it.  The remote location, the beautiful hills, the charming house.  It was fenced and it had a chicken coop and a barn.  It felt like a happy place.

Tyler rolled his eyes at me while I frolicked for a minute, running up and down a hill.

Then he made us get in the car.

and we ascended the driveway of doom, once again saying a little prayer we wouldn’t get stuck in the mud on the incline.

I said goodbye because I know I can’t have it.  It’s not practical.  It’s not practical.  It’s not practical.

Repeat.

But it sure is pretty.

Ok so I cannot figure out why my posts will not let me put double spaces between things!  The spaces show up in the editor, and in the HTML, but when I save the post they disappear.  Anyone know why?  It’s driving me CRAZY.

Instagrams!

Self portraits from today:

******

We had one of the last nice winter days from this unseasonably warm weather the other day…and we enjoyed it quite a bit.

Today it’s rainy, changing over to snow tonight with cold blustery wind.

So now these are just memories…oh warm weather, I heart you.  Not a fan of cold dreary winter at all.

Eating chocolate from their Christmas stockings:

Gus, my favorite beloved kitty.

Backyard.  Warm weather.  60 degrees in January!  If only it could be like this all of January.

June Duck!

Self portrait.  (Ignore cyclops pimple…)

Love that there’s a light rainbow right in the middle.

This one, a bit too much sun!

See, gorgeous winter day!

Silkie hen Madame Pomfrey.

Canine Trifecta sunning themselves.

One very sad thing from that warm day.  My hen Trouble died.  Her leg stopped working and her comb turned purple–circulation issue perhaps?

She slowly got more and more stiff over two or three days, then she just fell over dead that morning.

She was 3 years old.

She was a funny hen. Even Tyler was sad to see her gone.

Rosie at lunch…Serious face is very serious.

Ada eating ice cream.

If only she would stay asleep…so peaceful.

(My user name on Instagram is Pepper44 if you want to follow me.)

In regards to the sweet little girl in the previous entry–Tyler says he’s not ready for international adoption yet.  He wants to wait until we make a ton of money per year so it wouldn’t be a struggle to finance the adoption, then he says he’d love to do it.  I don’t agree with that idea at all.  If we waited until we were rich to do things then we’d be wasting years of our lives.

I’m pretty sure this is purely a struggle between a left brained person and a right brained person.

There isn’t much I can do about it, it’s not like I can force him to go along with it.

The weird thing is that I feel so strongly about it.  Like, I can’t just accept it and move on.  I have no idea why, it’s not as if I’m fixating on it and pouting about it on purpose.  I just feel deeply sad…?

If it wasn’t meant to be, they why in the world do I feel so strongly about her?  Just…strange.  Unexplainable.  Maybe I’ll never know the reason.  Maybe something else unforeseen will happen.  I’m praying for this feeling to go away if this isn’t going to work out, because it’s kind of depressing.  (And totally out of the blue.)

I’m avoiding looking at her picture.  Rosie keeps asking me about her.

 

 

 

 

I keep forgetting to share these–from a few days ago:

The makings of applesauce.  Apples were 59 cents a pound!

(1 cup of brown sugar, fresh ground cinnamon, and some water.)

My dissatisfied assistant.  She wanted me to stop and nurse her in her favorite chair with Birdie, her stuffed penguin.

Then she got out the grill tongs and used them to attack her sister’s doll.

Stewing apples.

I smashed it up a bit after this, but didn’t take a picture.

Ada did some taste testing for me.

Approved!

Rosie refused to taste it until I told her it was apple pie sauce.  Then she loved it.  Rosie doesn’t like having her picture taken lately.

From yesterday:

Ada enjoying fried rice in the new pants I made her.

I find hospitals somewhat disorienting and panic inducing.  My Grandpa is in the ICU.

From this afternoon, creepy self portrait of me with Princess Chicken.  I think the iPhone distorted the shape of my face a bit, hah.

Her neck is normal, she’s just craning her head funny to look at my hair.  She likes my prolific hair.  It’s super windy out, so my hair was flying all over and catching her attention.

Rosie, Rosie…who has had a GREAT day of being well behaved.

 

 

here are some happy little faces brought to you via iPhone’s Instagram app. 

 

 

 

 

 

Spaghetti for lunch…

 

Benny Duck.

 

Norbert the bearded dragon

 

Love Mom, Love Rosie

 

 

Leaf lantern experiment.  (Used modge podge.)

 

 

Just a few minutes ago…