Studio Dream

I have been felting for a number of years now, and my current plan is to ramp up from a part time to a full time career once my three children are all in school.  But I am not organized.  I have wool and craft materials all over the house.  I get side tracked by laundry.  And dishes.  And DIY home projects.  And cooking.  You name it.

Anyway, I have a dream to seperate my home and work (a little) by having a studio on our property where I can  store all my craft supplies,  where I can teach small classes and where I can sell some products.  I have started doing research: there is a whole movement of building tiny houses!  "The Tiny House Movement."  Who knew!  Here are some cool ones:


http://www.materialicious.com/2009/04/farm-buildings-into-tiny-houses.html
Okay, so this one might not meet my needs for a studio/shop.  But I have been teasing my brother-in-law for years that I was going to make a home out of an old grain bin.


http://tinyhouseblog.com/earthcob/little-cob-cabin/
This one is cute.  Not practicle for my needs, but cute.  Check out the inside!


Love the stone floor and counter top!  Love the windows!


Looks pretty spacious too!


How cute is this one?  Perfect for New England!  Highly functional, and beautiful.

So I have been brain storming on how to turn my shed/chicken coop into my studio.  Some basic needs for my studio space are:

water (for cleaning, rinsing and felting wool)
1/4 bath bathroom (for classes)
electricity
heating of some sort
shelving for display of wool and products
stove top for dying wool.
Drying racks
a loft for wool storage
Windows.
And I'd like to have a place to sleep of some sort for friends and family to stay in when they come and visit me.

Amazingly enough, I have gotten some very practical ideas from Jill Barklem's childrens books.   She has amazing illustrations!

Perhaps I'll start my conversion next summer.  I'll have to start with building a new chicken coop.

Becoming a Country Bumpkin

Did you know I used to live in Minneapolis?  Within the city limits?  Within walking distance of downtown?  Yup.  I lived in the Midwest for a whole decade.  I used to live in the thick of it.  I ordered fancy $4.00 coffees at cool coffee shops.  I ate out all the time.  Oh, the food .... the food!  I used to go to music concerts.  And (gasp) I shopped for my clothes in a mall.  I admit, I have never been overly fashionable.  (Those of you who know me well need not nod your head in whole-hearted affirmation.)

Then, John and I decided to up and move to a little town in NH.

I didn't realize I made the slow transformation from hip twenty-something-year-old living to thirty-something-year-old rural life.  But it happened.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.   Recently flying back to Minneapolis showed me that.  There were some seriously swank women in the airport.

Apparently skinny jeans are cool.

Apparently baggy jeans aren't.  They are kind of frumpy.

Apparently wearing your hair in a messy bun is so '90s.

Apparently I should get those boots I love - and wear them on the outside of skinny jeans.

But I hate skinny jeans.

And, like an old person, I gasped at the price of a small coffee in the airport.

It is official, folks.  I think I might be an aging country bumpkin.

So I bought some lipstick.  "Lip Shimmer" actually.

But I can't give up the banjo or quilting or my pick-up.  I just can't.

Surprise!

Life does go on after bed rest.  That is why this blog is called Beyond Bed Rest. Really, it does.  And I am quickly remembering that life really does stay interesting after children are born. In many ways it is more interesting.  And surprising.

Today's surprise was not related to children .... I don't think that even my oldest could have dreamed this up!

It was surprising.

It was shocking.

It was perplexing.

It was definitely gross.

It was a chair in the septic tank.  Yes, a chair.  In the septic tank.

Even B of JBC Septic, who showed up for our routine maintenance, was stunned.  He had never seen that before.  What was it doing there?  One can only guess.  I am hoping no one went down there to lounge around and have a beer.  But that would make the story even funnier, wouldn't it?

B got a special hook and removed it.  And even though I am sometimes frighteningly frugal, I splurged and paid him to take it away and dispose of it.  Pew!  I am mean phew! Really, can't you just see me forgetting to tell my kids when they came home from school?  I might tell them to go play outside, where they would find it and think I had just drug a new piece of furniture home from the second hand store to refinish.  The thought of finding my children bouncing on it does give me the chills.

But really, it is good that life continues after bed rest.  There is apparently so much more to life than misery.

Victory

For those of you who remember my post in which I threatened to become a burly weight lifter, I am still extra soft (in all the wrong places) from my pregnancy.  I am not running yet.  I am not growing a mustache.  In fact, it is a bit discouraging to have only lost 5 pounds since Darren's birth 11 weeks ago.  But I have been living it up with my kids.

Today, as promised, I hiked Cardigan.  I didn't do it backwards.  But I did do it with three children, and so I consider this to be the beginning of life as my family once knew it. As Cora so eloquently put it, we can "almost reach the sky".  We are conquering big things and here is a picture to prove it!

Normalcy has returned, and we are climbing to great heights.

We are having fun playing in the sun again .... being pirates .... and ruling islands. 

We are trying not to fall off any cliffs that life might put in our way.  

And we are enjoying the blessing of living in a world as beautiful as this.  

We are celebrating victory .... and three .... yes three .... sleeping children.

Recovery

Life with three children is a little different than I imagined.  How could I have forgotten the infant stage?  I expected to see all three of the kids romping around in the yard together.  Darren doesn't romp.  But sometimes he gets romped.  Seth and Cora can really make him laugh, but I still find myself having to give appropriate guidelines for how to handle babies.  Darren has survived the first 11 weeks despite being thrown up on, dragged across the floor, and fallen on.  The kids certainly think of themselves as a unit of three.  Seth and Cora constantly remind me that I shouldn't forget to grab Darren, as if I forget him all the time.  As if I have ever forgotten him.  We have spent a few days at the beach, and Darren is learning to sleep right there under a beach umbrella.  So far not too bad.

My recovery is still nebulous.  Lots of people have asked me how I have healed.   The answer: I have no idea.  Asherman's syndrome largely stays hidden until your monthly cycles.  I am breast feeding and so I have no idea how my uterus has healed, and I don't expect to know for a few months - or possibly until I wean.  One major plus in my favor is that I have now had a complete pregnancy.  We know pregnancy heals Asherman's syndrome in ways that cannot be replicated medically.  But I have two major negatives.  1. I had retained placenta after Darren's delivery which had to be manually extracted.  To me, that indicates there is still a problem with the lining of my uterus. 2. I had a major uterine infection following this pregnancy.  An additional trauma to my uterus at this point could lead to more complications. I have not even had an internal exam since Darren is born.  So really I have no idea if I have interuterine adhesions or not.   But I am praying that my cycles will just quietly appear one day without writhing, blinding pain.

Recovering from bed rest is a bit of a drag.  I can't believe how incredibly exhausted I am all the time.  I don't think I ever have time to enjoy my bed.  My eyes close before I am all the way in it.  And being on bedrest decreases your metabolism drastically, so I have lost almost no weight since Darren was born.  Urrrr.  But I have started to build up my muscles again by doing pilates and light weight training.  We had a family exercise competition the other night.  Good news is that I didn't come in last.  I beat Darren!

Adjusting to being home again is going well.  I love my morning snuggles.  But I do miss the Styrofoam cups of ice cream terribly!  

Mother's Day

At  the encouragement of my neighbor, I have been thinking of what to write today.  But my emotions of being a mother to three thriving kids is too emotional for me to really capture after this last year.  There are some emotions that engulf you so much that they sweep over you like a wave; they seem as deep as the ocean and they seem to swell and take you over.  That is how mother's day has been for me this year.  I love being a mom.

Seth laughs at my jokes - not everyone does that.  And not only does he laugh at them, he often tells my jokes over and over.  Like when I ask Darren what he wants to eat: "What'll it be, milk or milk?"  And I love that Seth is one of the few people who can keep up with my project making.  I love the excitement in his eyes when he sees something new - a four leaf clover, or a water skeeter, or a new plant.  I love how he points to every raptor in the sky.  I love how he smiles with his whole body.

Cora is a complete delight to me.  She is quick to help .... especially with all things relating to cooking and Darren .... and she is very loving.  She will smother Darren with kisses and hugs.  I love how Cora is such a great playmate to Seth.  She is always by his side, even in the mud in the driveway, rain dripping off the roof, or the vernal pool catching bugs.  I love how she comes for 20 minutes of snuggles every morning to wake me up.  And I love how she dances to music.

And then there is Darren.  What is there not to love about a six week old baby that loves to be in his mama's arms?  Just by wanting me, I feel loved.  He makes my arms feel so full and he makes my heart glad.  And his newly found smiles are fresh and joyful.  How can I feel so much?

But John is my key to being a good mother.  He is the one who picks up my slack, takes the kids away for a few minutes when I am at my whits end, who cooks supper, who constantly tells me how he thinks I am a good mother.  He looks past the unwashed dishes and sees the smiles on the kids.  He looks past the clutter in the living room and tells me how glad he is that I took the kids on a hike.  He hugs me and encourages me when I feel like I have destroyed all chances of having my children to grow into productive citizens in society.
And most of all, he let's me sleep.  

A Dream

I will never forget the first time I saw John. Physics class, freshman year. He was wearing a short sleeved rock t-shirt over a longed sleeved long john shirt. His baseball hat was pushed back and his eyes met mine with a slow and easy smile. My stomach flipped. I knew in that exact moment that I would marry him. But I didn't exactly have all my ducks in a row. It took 2 years until I finally was able to coerce him into dating me. Eventually, the boundaries between our lives began to erase.  My friend, Dot, once put it to me this way: "He keeps you grounded and you help him fly."

And with him, I have had great dreams turned into realities. One of these dreams has been to travel. I am so grateful for the five years that he and I had together before Seth was born. I am grateful that we camped from wilderness to wilderness, melding into a single entity - not only with each other, but also with the world created for us. It was a time when we went beyond sharing laughter and friends and common interests. Being together in the woods and hiking and seeing creation for the first time was to share something so great that words fail. Words like silence and reverence and beauty and dreams and freedom all pale, leaving the experiences we shared at that time as intangible and unutterable as wraiths. They remain only in our memories to haunt us with unimaginable beauty in place and in body and in heart. The places we have been and the world we have seen together have pulled us together with a inescapable gravity.

I find myself often tempted to just pack up and go. This of course is insane. But, as Margaret Gehrke stated, "To be sensible is to be commonplace."  I am a listless soul in search of something bigger than the monotony of the every day, bigger than myself.

While I was in the hospital recovering from a uterine infection following Darren's birth, John and I watched the  4th video of Ken Burns's documentary on the National Parks.  We have been watching them (slowly) over the last year.  I have loved them, and they evoke in me an idea of something beautiful.  Perhaps it is because John and I have loved visiting the National Parks together so much.  Perhaps it is because in the quietness of the world I have found a preservation of mind and spirit.  Perhaps it is because I have grown there.  The documentary has made me believe in the National Park system as something to be treasured as an American ... as a human being.  I have come to value public space as something to be treasured.

A dream has been born.  I dream to share these places with my children.  Now that Darren is here, I feel that I have completed something and I can't wait to share the world with my family of five!  My children are in that in between age .... too old to be hauled on our backs still, but too young to be able to hike a strenuous hike.  Since they are still small, maybe the next park to be visited will be Mesa Verde, where there is a lot to see without too many miles of trekking.  Or maybe Theodore NP in ND, where there are concretions, wild horses and a herd of buffalo.  Parks like Zion or  Bryce should be explored when they are able to knock off 10 + miles by themselves.  Like me, Seth has a wondering spirit, and has been longing to see Redwood NP for some time now.

I have spent a bit of time searching http://www.terragalleria.com/parks/.  There are pictures of every NP and many other places there, and it is phenomenal to see.  I have found that I love looking at the pictures and picking out where to go next.  But even with the incredible imagery there, the pictures pale in comparison to the experience of being in those places in person.

Anyone have suggestions on what parks are nice to visit with kids?

John and I have done:
Acadia
Great Smokeys
Theodore Roosevelt
Badlands
Windcave
Tetons
Glacier
Yellowstone
Cascades
Olympic
Arches
Big Bend
Canyonlands
Grand Canyon
Banff (Canada)
Jasper (Canada)
Campobello Island (Canada)