Our Handmade Life

A Trinity of Births-- The Third Time's the Charm

I planned a beautiful home birth. I hired (and paid) a great midwife, did my yoga and took my vitamins, re-read Spiritual Midwifery for the 20th time, set up the pool, visualized the scene I wanted, and then got into labor with more grace than I actually thought I would have when the time came. 36 hours later, things began to go awry.

Why am I telling this story on a blog that is about hand-making our own life? Partly because I am so shell-shocked and in need of processing that I can't help myself. Partly because it's more expedient than telling it in person a few hundred more times (though it is a crowd pleaser). Mostly though, it's because I can't think of anything more hand made than growing your own family from scratch (or importing them from elsewhere, for that matter), and a birth is a major life defining event which I think deserves a lot of thoughtful navigation and intentional action, both before and during the labor and delivery. So I thought sharing mine might help you think about yours, or about other parts of your life worthy of such weighty attention.

Birth Scene #1:

I went into labor on a Saturday night at precisely 10 pm, despite the fact that I had specifically told my uterus to give me a nice daytime labor-- I like a good night's sleep! I called Josh who was an hour away at a drum circle and told him he'd be coming home that night rather than camping out, but I still slept till morning and woke up to labor that was constant but bearable. We went shopping for our delivery food (lots of watermelon, grape juice, bologna, and cottage cheese-- don't judge me, for some reason I like crappy sandwich meats in times of physical stress!), and came home to relax and wait.

That night, again at precisely 10 pm despite my uterine commandments, my water broke. Josh and I stood around staring at it for several minutes, wondering if it was the water or if I'd peed myself, since I had been headed for the bathroom. Josh finally volunteered to sniff it, and once we knew what it was, we called the midwife. Labor got harder after that, and I labored through the night making sounds that were less and less human, but still being surprised at how I was integrating the pain and intensity. Josh got a little sleep and got up around 2am to be with me. He lit candles and kerosene lamps, called the midwife, put on some Medicine for the People and some Polyphonic Spree to keep our spirits up, and held my hand. It was a really intense and beautiful time that seemed to stretch and contract into both a very long and very short span.

The midwife came in around 4:30am, checked me on the couch, and told me I was at an 8. Yay, that's a good way down the road! I felt encouraged and proud of myself. Then there was a flurry of activity as she, her assistant, and Josh set up everything around me, the pool, the sterile equipment, the pads and towels and food, and I just panted away all round and electric on the couch. The sun came up as I labored on, I opened almost to 10 as I went from the pool to the couch to the bathroom and back to the pool again. Again, the time seemed long and short, timeless altogether really, and I learned my own strength and how many blocks you can blow right past in the throws of labor, while my husband and midwives popped grapes into my mouth and fanned my face. It's true I can't accurately remember the pain now, but I do remember that I felt safe, very loved, and intensely strong (and tired).

Around 9:30 am I stood up, one leg on the arm of the couch, and started to push our son out. He moved down slowly but surely, and it was exciting to think how far I'd come in the labor. The midwife kept telling me how much I was going to love this baby forever and I kept thinking "I don't even want to think about this baby or forever, I just want to get through this pushing!". About a half hour or so of that brought Solace halfway down, to where I could reach in and feel his head, and Josh could see him headed our way. So amazing!

It was at this point that he stopped decending, and I felt like he just had no intention of moving down anymore. I remember asking my midwife to reach in and get him, but she was confident he'd come in his own time, and couldn't exactly do that anyway. What he did instead was go all the way back into the womb, where my cervix then closed to a 7 and began to swell shut since my body couldn't stop pushing against it. Now this was pain and stress! For what I remember to be the next 10 minutes but was in fact the next 5 hours, I tried and tried to relax and stop pushing, and the midwife tried and tried to keep my cervix from swelling, even putting ice against it in desperation. I am so glad to know we tried to so hard, when I look back in retrospect. At about 3 pm, our midwife suggested we transport to the hospital, since I was still pushing against a closed cervix and swelling myself to a point of no return. The idea was that with an epidural, I could stop pushing, relax and unswell, and finally push this boy out. Not having planned to actually go to a hospital, we were entirely unprepaired for this, so Josh just threw a dress on me, grabbed the bologne and a bucket of peanut butter (thank you East Wind Community), and we hopped in the car. Well, everyone else hopped, I waddled heavily and cried, from what I can remember.

Birth Scene #2:

The hospital was everything I thought it would be, all air conditioning and protocals and paperwork amidst controlled chaos. After a 3 hour debate over whether I could have an epidural or not, during which I was still uncontrollably pushing, I was given the drugs. This three hour hospital wait was the most painful and scary of my labor. The surroundings were cold and unfamiliar, the nurses were a rotating blur of different instructions, and all of it was everything I'd hoped to avoid. More importantly, the pain was blinding and the pushing was exhausting, and all control of my body was essentially long gone at that point. Once the numbness took over, I opened right back up to an almost 10, and was able to rest and talk again. We spent the night like this, waiting to push until told, negotiating with nurses who wanted to give me drugs I didn't want, who didn't like me breaking their rules (my water had been broken way longer than their protocals permit), trying different positions to move the baby down (hard with numb legs), and smuggling food and juice when no one was looking. Although I was exhausted in the morning, being at hour 58 of labor with no sleep, I was also very thankful to a crew of nurses who let me break their rules in an attempt to keep my birth as uncomplicated and natural as possible.

Birth Scene #3:

At 8:30 am, an old suited doctor walked into my room, told me he'd heard about me all night, and informed me that I was having a C-section. I said I was not and would not sign any paper work. He said he didn't care. I said I had eaten a whole bologne sandwich half an hour before. He said he didn't care. I said I thought his insistance that this was a necessary surgury was bullshit. He said I'd be in the operating room in an hour and walked out.

And he was right. An hour later I was laid out open armed like a sacrificial lamb under bright lights and masked surgeons. While I listened to someone run through the horror movie tool checklist over my shoulder (2 saws, scalples, gauze, clamps, staple gun...), I was cut open, felt all my organs get shoved so far up I actually felt my lungs clog my throat, then felt my baby being pulled out of my body. Now that is some experience. Josh got to hold him right away, and then he landed on my chest, where he ate a good sized meal within half an hour of coming out to join us-- he means to stay well fed!

Having never been to doctors for more than check-ups, and certainly never stayed in a hospital, the recovery from surgury was long and much harder than birth, from my point of view. It wasn't that the pain was too much, though everything hurt and after 3 days of labor with no sleep or food, I was pretty beat up. It wasn't entirely that I was trapped in a tiny cold room for days on end with nurses who kept waking me up in the middle of the night to steal my baby and sugges more pills and shots, though that was the longest 4 days of my life!

More than anything, the recovery was hard because my heart was broken. Everyone I know from childhood up to the present day births at home. Everything I know and everything I have seen gears me toward birthing at home. I have anticipated my own birth since I was a little girl, and I was so excited to push him out with my own strength, to give Josh the gift of catching his own son as he entered the world, and to provide Solace with a soft landing and all the good and nourishing things that go with that. I felt like a failure, like if I had just pushed harder when I had the chance... if I had been more brave... if I had refused the hospital under any circumstances... if I had prayed the right prayer to the right gods... maybe I could have joined the ranks of women who birthed at home, rather than feeling like one of many cattle in a giant processing plant. I am emberassed to say I had this surgury, so I've started just saying when people ask that I had most of a home birth :). It's the best explaination of my birth I currently know how to give without leaking tears.

So Josh and I feel we've pretty much had all three typical birth experiences, the home birth (afterall, I did push him half way down!), the epidural-waiting-at-the-hospital birth, and the c-section. Were we to have another child, I would easily choose the home birth again. Not only were my surroundings much more pleasant (who wouldn't want to spend the hardest moments of their life in a pool with their friends in their living room?), but I really felt like integrating the increasing pain kept me grounded in what was happening. It wasn't a detatched process that I was being told about, as it was in the hospital, it was an intense growing process that I was struggling through step by step. I felt my own strength, I felt a real attatchment to my husband and child (something I lost grasp of in the hospital), and even though it was INCREADIBLY painful and hard, I was amazed at how I kept finding myself further and further along in my labor, and still alive and functioning!

So this is the story of Solace-- the first of many many many! And this is our trilogy of 3 labor experiences in one-- the last that we know of! Welcome Solace... however you needed to get here, we are excited and ready for our journey together!

 

Easter Egg Hunts for Grown-Ups (only occasionally coinciding with Easter)...

I have this picture in my mind of the couple I never want to be half of. I'm not sure where it came from, but it's the stereo-typical bored and disconnected couple who watches tv together rather than talking, has a depressingly predictable routine, and only touch each other on accident or for their once-a-year sex date. Of course marrying my perfectly matched partner and choosing the life we want every day together pretty much guarantees that I'm not on the path to that sad couple, but the image still occasionally lurks in my peripheral vision. To keep it at bay, I collect little rituals that I can pull out and perform when we have had a few weeks short on surprises or fun. Often Josh rolls his eyes when I announce one of our "couple nights," but he's a good sport and plays along, and always has fun once he gets going.

One of our favorites? Grown-up Easter egg hunt! I did actually originally invent it to give us something to do on Easter, but since then it's just a great communication game that we play once or twice a year for fun. The rules are simple. We each get 10 easter eggs, his are sport themed and mine have flowers so we can tell who's who's at hunt time. Then, with paper and Sharpie in hand, we write down a gift we would give the other and put one gift into each egg. What's so awesome about this? The rules (that we made up) clearly state that in our gift giving, we have both a million dollars, and unlimited magic. This makes for some great gift giving!

The first year, Josh gave me a baby (we were planning to make one), a vacation living on the set of Little House on the Prairie (you can't imagine how happy this would make me), and the ability to close jars and containers in our home (WHY would you close them when you're just going to open them again?!). I gave him unlimited time to follow the many passions he cultivates but can't always persue, smashing success for his band, and a majic faerie to keep in his pocket who let's him know when he's being a jerk (occasionally I think he could use this, though perhaps so could I). We had so much fun that this year he was excited to do it (he sort of moped his way into it the first time), and we had such a great time giving each other the greatest things we could think of! This year Josh gave me a private concert in our back yard with the Muppets, and I gave him the perfect piece of land on which to build our home and community. He gave me a pet unicorn, and I gave him a pass through time and space to hang out with any musician he'd like, currently dead or alive.

The really great thing about this game is that somehow it really feels like you're getting these amazing gifts, so we end up both feeling really rich and blessed by the end of it, like we have to put away the wrapping paper and get to work training this new unicorn or exploring this new dream home we've been given. It feels good to give the gifts too, because of course we aren't rich, and there are many times we each ache to give the other some special thing or other that is realistically out of our current reach. My favorite part is that it really lets us each see what the other thinks about us in the majic gifts they choose to give. Josh could have given me a big stack of cash, but he knows me well enough to know how happy I'd be on the set of Little House on the Prairie. He could have given me the ability to fly, but clearly he REALLY wants me to work on screwing the jar lids back on when I put them down.

With a total cost of about two bucks, a major fun factor that lasts hours, and the added bonus of being a great communication builder to boot, what's not to love? It could be just as fun with kids or friends, and you'd get interesting and different results every time! If you try this one at home yourself, I'd love to hear what you and your other egg fillers come up with, so do come back and share!

 

It's a... Blue Cake!

    Josh and I are big "surprise" people, as in we love to do little things for each other that entitle the doer to yell "surprise"! Rarely though, do we both get to be surprised at the same time, so when we had the opportunity to find out the gender of our first child, we knew we couldn't let this opportunity pass us by without a big to-do. So what was the next logical step in baby gender identification? Naturally, we threw a sex cake party!

    The morning we went in for the ultrasound, I was 20 weeks along and already impatient with the whole process, which was silly since the baby was only half-way cooked, so finding out the gender felt to me like a nice big step in the right direction. Josh had a little more patience (you know, because he has a LOT less uterus), but we were both excited to see how things were going in there. We told the nice tech girl that we didn't want to know the gender, but that rather we'd like her to write it down and fold it up so that we could find out together later that night with a cake and a house full of guests. She obliged and we had a lovely time seeing little arms and toes and facial expressions (at one point she poked him to move him, the lights in the room flickered and went out, and he turned his head to the camera and stuck out his tongue), none of which we could have identified had they not been pointed out to us. When she zeroed in on "the goods," she covered the screen with her folder, and I started to crack.

    "Maybe we could just go ahead and find out now, and then we can just pretend to be surprised later," I suggested, and Josh looked like he was prepaired to let me have my way. Our nice tech girl suddenly turned strict task master on us and said absolutely not, we'd said what we wanted and she wasn't going to let us go back on it now! When we were all bundled up and ready to leave, she handed us an envalope with the results and incriminating gential photographs inside. It was taped at every seam and had the words "no peeking" scrawled across it for good measure. We smiled and thanked her for helping us stick to our guns, and she looked us up and down and told us not to bother holding it up to the light when we got outside, as she'd double folded it in extra paper. No cheating on our party guests for us, that girl took a cake party seriously!

    Next I brought a box of cake mix, frosting, food coloring, and my taped up impenetrable results over to my friend's house so that she could bake the blue or pink cake, cover it with frosting, and bring it to the party that night. Her house happened to be full of teachers and therapists who I didn't even know at the time, and before slipped out the door I could already hear them all chanting "open it, open it"!

    That was a long day of waiting!

    Since I was tired and grouchy, party prep on my end consisted of a sort-of house cleaning, the hanging of recycled wedding garlands around the house, the lighting of countless lamps and candles, and me dumping chips and salsa into pretty bowls. Easy and fast! Our guests piled in, descended on the snacks, made a lot of baby sex jokes, and waited, waited, waited to cut the cake. Josh told me he was nervous because it had only that day occurred to him that we could possibly have a girl (he just always assumed he made boys, I guess), and while he was happy either way, he was afraid his look of surprise might come across like a look of disappointment. I fed him chips and salsa, which solves most problems.

    I have to say, I wasn't sure the cutting open of a cake was enough to really justify a whole party, but when we gathered around its sugary loveliness, the tension was high and we were all excited! Two quick knife slices and the first piece was pushed aside-- a cake so electric blue one wanted to dive right in and go swimming in it! It's a boy! While I did have one fleeting thought of all the dresses I wouldn't get to make, Josh and I were over the moon excited, and the whole house let out a big whooping yell to celebrate with us-- it was great! Bright blue cake for everyone with big glasses of local milk, and suddenly the world around us had changed a little. We are having a boy! We get to plan for him now, pick a name, debate the appropriate age to start dread locks, start sewing tiny over-alls!

    It's a lot to take in, cutting open a cake in a full swing party to realize you are having a son. A son! I think I was in my own world for a bit, while people and noise swirled around me, and blue cake was passed out like communion bread. Josh looked about the same, but as we looked at the sugared-up, candle-lit faces of our friends and family, we both felt encouraged, and up for the challenge that a blue cake will bring.

 

Introducing... Banjo! (puppy/oracle)

Djembe was lonely. For a while now he's been able to figure out when we're leaving the house, and he gives us the SADDEST brown-eyed soul deflating look, then turns away and refuses to interact at all-- I assume to stress how alone he feels in the world when we're gone. This fall he lost interest in bringing the ball back during play time, and would only catch it and then place it gently in the grass. Then he began spending long stretches of time laid out across the top of the couch cushions, actually sighing out loud to convey his depression. For a 120 pound two year old Golden Retriever, this kind of behavior seemed like a cry for help-- in particular his sudden lack of retrieving.

It was this downer doggy behavior that led to my one day finding myself packed into my husband's truck, Djembe's furry ears flapping in the wind behind us, barreling down the highway, destination unknown, with a suspicious look of satisfaction on Josh's face. Being a person who needs very much to control her environment, I did not enjoy the hour long mystery ride that kept bringing us closer and closer to the state line, even when I was eventually bribed with ranch flavored corn nuts and pink grapefruit juice. (Actually, those things sound good right now)...

Thankfully, this was one of those days I had the grace to suck it up and keep my crazies in my head, because when we pulled off onto a deserted exit beside a dusty pickup near Oklahoma, I was greeted with a box full of brown and white Border Collie puppies and left to pick the one that would join our family. At first it was a tough choice because I was so enveloped in a pile of delicious furry puppy delirium, but the decision became easy enough after watching them play with our mood altered retriever-- I picked the one who didn't keep trying to nurse/bite poor Djembe's penis. We took him home asleep in a box, and he already felt like part of the clan by the time we laid down to sleep that night. Djembe was in puppy love, and that was good enough for us.

That was all very nice, and no one can deny the awesomeness of new puppy furry love, but I tell this story to share what Banjo did for me. For all my leanings toward an earth-mother, laid back, grounded sort of persona, the truth is that I'm pretty high strung by nature, fairly in need of controlling my environment, and prone to moments of ridiculous fit-throwing anger when I am frazzled beyond reason, which is a lot of the time being pregnant. Because of this, I threw some fits during Banjo's potty training weeks at having to clean up dirty floors and chewed up undies. I don't like this about myself, but it's a hard habit to break. It leaves me feeling stressed and jerky, and I know it leaves my puppies or my husband or the lady behind me in the checkout aisle a little shell-shocked (though the lady in the check-out aisle was really asking for it). Here's where the puppy comes in.

Each time I would spaz out and yell about something that was destined to happen, would happen again, and that I couldn't change, Banjo would look up and me with such complete love and trust and bewilderment, my anger didn't have anywhere to go from there.  On top of that, Djembe, who loved Banjo on sight, would crawl over and sit next to him looking terrified and sad, like I was a crazy tornado headed right for him and his new friend, which I sort of was. I began to see, after many meltdowns, not just how I hurt them, and not just how useless my energy explosions were, but how normal their actions were, and how abnormal mine were. I started to recognize that a big part of life really is just getting the dishes done and cleaning up messes as we move along our path. I started to get, while being confronted with those big puppy eyes, that I was resisting a part of life that was not only normal, but as beautiful as the fun parts, if I would let it be, because it was real, and it was an interaction not only with my animals, but with my home and the world I want to create. In fact, the act of cleaning is just as much a creation of the life I want as the act of painting a picture or writing a book. It also dawned on me while scrubbing poop from a rug, that the child inside me would likewise create a lot of mundane work, and that I was about to have a really deep experience in which I could participate and soak up every moment, or a really awful experience in which I could resist the changes and work they require, and miss a lot of my own life being too busy resenting the very thing I'd asked for.

Either way, Banjo's butt and Djembes brown eyes reminded me, the poop was going to keep on coming. During this pregnancy, and as I watch the Border Collie and the Golden Retriever work out their own little social world, I am learning to be more patient. I am learning to re-frame my house work, even the extra messes, into moments of my life that are of equal value to others I may prefer. I am learning to throw less fits.

Last week I saw the most offensive post on Facebook, a place I often get into conflict since I can't (and won't) stop myself from letting people know when they're being overt sexists, or racists, or homophobic jerks. Even though this often causes me a great deal of stress (turns out people do not like to hear these things about themselves), I keep doing it, my logic being that someone has to. So there I was typing out a laser sharp retort to this comment I couldn't ignore. I'd spent a good half hour getting all my wording just right, and just before I hit send, furry sweet Banjo slapped his paw onto the keyboard and deleted my message. Thinking I could remember what I wrote and trying to control my temper, I spent another 15 minutes re-writing a slightly less witty version of my comment, and before I hit send, Banjo hopped up and deleted it. I bit my tongue till it bled.

On the same day, I received a mailer from my toad-like, barely literate, racist backwoods embarrassment of a state representative, Mr. Billy Long, asking what I thought of his "job" so far. I had so much to say, I got out the new pen. While in the kitchen making tea and formulating the paragraphs of scathing critique I would give this bafflingly arrogant little man, Banjo ate the mailer, then peed on the floor, and Djembe started to look worried. I could feel the pressure building, the curse words forming, the desire to throw things making my fingers flex involuntarily, and then the lesson I'd been learning clicked into place. Not only was cleaning up the pee and the shredded paper a precious part of my own precious life, Banjo did me the biggest favor-- one that my husband had been trying to accomplish for months but that I wouldn't accept. He'd stopped my arguing, well intended though it was, stopped my negative thought patterns, accurate though they may be, and given me a day in which I could just breathe, clean the carpet, and be happy. No angry hate mail, no fighting in a virtual world, Banjo got rid of all of it, and was now laying in the mud outside, chewing on Djembe's leg.

I think everyone could use their own puppy oracle, but if you have really nice rugs, you can just take a lesson from mine.

Josh Builds a Chicken Coop!

This was actually the title of my last ramble, in which I meant to extol the virtues of living more sustainably and then move on to our fabulous Cluckingham Palace, but I guess I had a lot more to say about freedom than I thought, so here we are a week later and I'm dying to share the family coop!

One thing I love about my husband, general hotness aside, is how open he is to anything he views as a growing experience. I think this was a dangerous tendency through his teenage years, but these days he's more focused on poultry than testing the limits of the law for his life lessons, which suits me! Our beloved friend Wade has had a life long love affair with foul of every shape and size, so much that he brings to mind the Muppet Gonzo and his life partner Camilla (though Wade's life partner is a lovely human being named Angela, who does not in any way resemble a giant white chicken). It took exactly one sunny afternoon in Wade's back yard (a near chicken utopia) to inspire Josh to create one of our own, and he got started the next day. That's how it works at our house, one day you're buying eggs from the store, the next day all but back yard grown eggs are banished forever and a tiny barn structure is being erected where once there was a hammock. I enjoy the abrupt changes myself, they're entertaining and usually sensible.

Josh's DIY Fly-By-the-Seat-of-His-Pants Project:

(Aka, you can build your own chicken coop too)!

Step 1: Know your options. Of course our first course of poultry action was to hit farm stores and craigslist to purchase ourselves a simple structure for chicken housing. (It should have been to check the local laws about chicken zoning, so be sure to do that before erecting a new neighborhood in your back yard). It took us all of about two hours to learn that commercial chicken coops are generally tiny, flimsy, and unjustifiably expensive. The store-boughten varieties were the worst offenders, starting out around $500 for a coop I could literally fit in my closet (and my closet is the tiny old kind in a tiny attic). The homemade craigslist versions were a little bigger and a little cheaper, but we're still talking pretty flimsy and starting at around $200. Nope, not for us, thank you!

Step 2: Draw up plans and gather your supplies. Unless you went with the buying option and already have your coop ready to go (and good for you if that works, we're just way to cheap for that route!), it's time to make your plans, and for that you must know what you're working with. Josh took about 5 minutes to draw up our plans, a chicken coop not being the most complicated of structures. We'd wanted originally to be married in a big old barn, so Josh figured the next best thing would be to build one in our back yard since he was going to build something anyway. He sketched out his barn and off he went to collect lumber. Now, if you're going to buy all your wood new, you might find that buying a craigslist coop will cost you about the same and save you a week of labor. If you like things to be free like we do, the world is abundant with enough scrap wood to build a small structure if you just keep an eye out for it. Josh found a great pile of old wood from a stripped privacy fence, loaded it up, and piled it that night in our back yard.

Step 3: Find your power tools and get to building! Even the building phase of this project didn't require much in the way of resources. We had a basic electric round blade saw, a hammer and nails, tape measure, and a staple gun. Josh sunk four 2x4's into the ground measured out at the width of the coop he wanted to build, then cut a piece of plywood for the floor and braced it into place with scrap lumber underneath, so that there was an inverted peace sign at the base of each corner of the coop floor. Next he decided the height he'd like for the walls (based in part on how much wood we had to work with), measured and marked his lengths on the boards, and got to cutting. On the already standing four corner 2x4's, he nailed cross beams for support and once all the wall pieces were cut (which took the better part of a day), he nailed each one into place on the new structure lickety-split, like a tiny Amish barn raising. He even included spaces for windows, doors, and a hinged wall for egg collection in his measurements, and then just pieced it all together as if it had come in a kit.

Step 4: The finishing touches... Lest you think we are just super-human and that this project isn't for you, I must share that the building part of the coop took several days, and there was a lot of cursing at times when Josh realized he'd measured something wrong, or that things weren't going as smoothly as planned. Once the big structure was up, it just needed its surrounding wall of chicken wire, some adorable little hinged doors for closing in the chickens and for our own desired cuteness factor, and of course, a roof. The doors were easy and made from the left over scraps of bigger wood, and popped on with hinges in the course of a morning. The windows were covered with chicken wire, and in the winter we nail a real antique wood-framed window over the space for warmth. The roof was made from a few simple pieces of scrapped corrugated tin that Josh found who knows where, cut and bent to the shape we needed and nailed heavily into place. A slatted board run up to the chicken door was the last piece to go into place, until I found Josh outside in the twilight building them a little chicken balcony for added ambiance. He just couldn't resist.

Step 5: Reap your rewards! For the week of labor we (mostly Josh) put into this project, we saved several hundred dollars and got what I'm pretty sure is the coolest chicken shack ever. I'm positive our chickens brag to the other winged creatures about it, and rightly so. Now that you've got your coop all set up and ready (you've been stopping to follow my every instruction, right?), it's time for the fun part! Pull out some paint and decorate! Buy yourself a bail of hay (less than $10) and fill your coop and nesting boxes with its sweet fluffy goodness! Toss in some chickens, and start eating home-grown eggs! They taste great, you know they're good for you, they come from happy animals whose names you know, and you get to collect them yourself. which is the funnest part of all!

Also, if you're anything like me, you acqure a bonnet and apron for your egg collecting, and wear them out to spread feed and hay when no one else is home to see since they keep telling you it's silly. Shh. That part is our secret...

Freedom is, in Fact, Free

    The idea of freedom has been on my mind lately. It started out that way because I'm hearing the word bandied about lately in political debates as if A.) my freedom were under constant dire threat from every direction at all times, and B.) my personal freedom to do anything I want must surely supersede my desire to have a healthy planet or body, or to live in a peaceful world. I'm getting the impression that a depressing LOT of people think that freedom has something to do with owning a gun, getting to be publicly racist/sexist/classist/homophobic without any hindrance or even feedback, or being able to pollute the air and water or exploit other people or resources to the breaking point, just because it might be what I want to do. I am baffled by this. Certainly I want to have the right to own a gun, whether or not I have one, to speak freely even if my ideas are controversial, and even to engage with my planet on my own terms (though for me that means using a composting toilet even if the city finds it uncouth).

    While I am finding my "American freedoms" to be somewhat curbed of late (thank you, Patriot Act), I don't feel concerned that overall my "freedom" is largely threatened by politicians or "terrorists" out to get me. I know that gun control will never eliminate arms in our country, and that people who spew hate will be allowed to continue to do so, and it seems obvious to me that all the ruckus over these issues is no more than a bunch of nasty fear mongering put out by people who think I must be stupid enough to exchange my own strength and freedom for actions based on fear.

    So when I say freedom has been on my mind, I mean the word has almost lost all meaning in the public discourse and its overuse has started to irritate me.  Still, when we strip away its social connotations, what could be more important than freedom? What could be a more essential core value? And if freedom to me is not the power to wield my every whim like a fist against my neighbors, then what is it? I've spent several nights in a wrestling match with this question, and here is what I have come to:

    There was a time not long ago, when people lived perfectly normal and happy lives without cars, or televisions, or even electricity. I'm not hearkening back to the "good old days" in a nostalgic sense, I am pointing out that for most of history, people were not chained to an intense barrage of monthly bills which, if not paid, threatened an abrupt removal of services that suddenly we feel we literally cannot LIVE without. While I appreciate modern conveniences, our adjustment to electricity has created a cycle in which, if we do not pay the utility company an exorbitant fee every month on their tight schedule, they will cut off our access to light, heat, entertainment, and the ability to store and prepare our food. And we are terrified of this loss? We really believe that without these thugs help, we will starve to death in the dark if we don't freeze or die of boredom first! And yet our grandparents had light, heat, entertainment, and healthier food than we have, without a single coal fired power plant chuffling away and demanding half our income every month. The same can be said of the advent of cars, and plenty of other products we now find indispensable, and that we now make life-long payments for.

    So who cares whether or not I have the "freedom" to own a gun, if I can't disentangle myself from the job I hate because I will die without the benevolent monthly bill of City Utilities? What does my "freedom" to do whatever I want matter, if all I can do at the end of a day is collapse in front of the TV, because I'm so exhausted and spiritually beaten down from trying to pay for my car and convenience food and the new stuff the commercials tell me to want? Is slavery to monthly bills and the media push to consume some component of my innate "freedom" that I don't know about? Despite this foundation of being chained to a job/financial cycle/culture, am I somehow truely free because I can still buy a gun or flap my exhausted mouth if I want to? I'm not convinced that I am. I am convinced that if freedom is my goal, and it seems to be everyone's goal these days, then the only way to achieve it is to create my own life by cutting myself away from the one that was laid out for me by unimaginable wealthy people who would like to siphon off the little resources I have until I am nothing but a leftover husk.

    When I think of life in this way, handmaking my clothes isn't just a pleasant creative outlet, or a way to express my quirkiness and save a few bucks, it is an exercise in freedom, not just in not dumping my money into a bottomless money spending cycle, but a practice of saying "I don't even want what you're selling me, and I'm not buying it." Growing our food becomes not just a great and inexpensive way to eat well, it is a real and concrete step toward actual freedom, and a disentanglement with a system that would feed me expensive processed crap that will land me at the doctor's office with another bill from him. This is real freedom, the kind that is each of our birth-right, the kind toward which we should be striving, and the kind I wish people were talking about when they wave their flags and cast their votes, either with their ballots or with their dollars spent. This is the kind of freedom I seek, and this is the kind of freedom a hand made life affords.

    Do I still own a car? I do. I live in a city where it would be hard not to, though that's not an excuse, and scooter ownership is on my list of long term goals. Do I still have city utilities? For now, though that is changing too, and I'll talk more about that later. If a shift in consciousness is the first step, then I am well on my path. I don't suggest we all turn Amish (ok, I would LOVE that, but I'm not insisting on it), but we can learn to live with a LOT less, and the less we need, the more truly free we are.

    Every time I hang my laundry on the line, or light a kerosene lamp, or pick up a book rather than a remote, I am more free. Every time I stitch up a new dress and enjoy the compliments I get for something I made rather than bought, I better know my own strength in the world. Every time you take the stairs rather than the elevator, pull a carrot from your own yard, or learn to change your tire yourself, you bolster your own freedom... enough time on the internet, let's go get our needles or hammers and get to work!

In the Water and Of the Water, Part II

 

    You might recall from my last post, my direction to be "In and of the water." I really did love the poetic sound of that statement, which became a mantra in my head that has yet to leave. I love the sound and suggestion of it, reminding me of things both spiritual and elemental, reminding me to be grounded and cool-- a balance definitely needed for my normally up-in-the-air fiery self. I enjoyed the week or so between my first hearing that and my self-imposed Lick Creek baptism, in which I felt an almost physical pull to stop my car at every creek and plunge myself into the babbling water, regardless of how questionably dirty and snake ridden that water might be. By every "eastern medicine" account, I am an earth-fire-air girl, with almost no water in my make-up. This philosophy has born out in real life, as I almost never get thirsty, almost never sweat, and am a little catlike in my avoidance of anything bath or shower related. (Yes, I clean myself, but having to get wet is a battle of will every time). So this new draw to the water was a refreshing shift for me, and the words made it feel like a sacred call, which added an enjoyable tinge of drama to my sudden need for creek dunking.

    Certainly, my pull toward this cleansing ritual was born in me for a reason, and answered some need that existed inside myself. I can't tell you the relief I felt when I finally did immerse myself in a naturally flowing waterway, and the one I hold most dear at that! Upon returning 100 miles to home that baptism evening, I pulled out of the closet a painting I'd done years ago, a 5x7 foot watercolor of myself wading into that very same creek, that I had then called "Baptism," and that had been rolled up and collecting dust for some time. I've posted it above so that you can see what I saw. My hair that day was braided just as I'd painted it, and of course I was wearing the same outfit which was nothing at all, the only thing one is expected to wear at Lick Creek :). One could say that my soul foresaw years ago just such a day as the one I'd just had, or that my mind had latched on to something I'd dreamt up as a younger girl and finally acted on it. Either way the result was the same, it was exactly what I needed.

    It was also, I think, the least of what I was supposed to get from this new focus on water. The truth is, spiritual enlightenment and satiation aside, I really don't get thirst or sweat, and I am pretty sure that I am walking (or maybe staggaring a little) through my life in a constant state of dehydration. This isn't great on any given day, and it's something I've been aware of but uninterested in for years, but as a woman now growing another human life, I am responsible on a much higher level to nourish myself and this new person, and that includes a lot of water. My doctor has already impressed this upon me, as has my midwife, my husband, and my more persistant friends. In fact my midwife, in growing frustration with my tell-tale dry skin, made me hold a two liter body of water and informed me that this is how much more blood I am going to have to generate out of thin air while pregnant. And what is all that blood made of if not extra water? If I want a healthy, happy pregnancy and home birth, as opposed to a brightly lit unpleasant hospital experience, I'd better start sucking down the water. For that matter, if I want a healthy baby and a happy life of my own, learning to take in liquid is a really good cornerstone to start with.

    So, do you think all this logic got me to drink more? Nope. It got me to want to, and to feel guilty about not doing it, but I just wasn't going to think myself into thirst. I tried to drink more but I felt choked up and waterlogged with the effort, which sometimes led to drinking even less! And then the phrase crept back into my consciousness-- "Be in the water, and of the water." I'd checked it off my list after swimming in a creek, as if any command from the Universe might be that easily achieved and dismissed! I may have been told to go into the water, to cleanse and refresh and metaphorically come out new, sure, but the work part of it was just beginning, and I couldn't ignore the message any longer. My big answer that I'd gone seeking from creation was clear: "Hey Jesse. Drink your water."

    And since apparently mantras from the sky are much more effective motivators for me than perfectly sensible medical advice, that finally kicked me into gear, and my friends and midwife are happy. I feel better too! Still, drinking is something I have to do consciously, so I've taught myself some helpful "water recipes" to keep my beverages appealing and to keep me coming back for more. For all my friends lectures, I notice that they don't drink much water either, since I'm not counting tea and soda in the water category, and since some good H2O is elementally important to all of us, I'm sharing my water jazzer-uppers with the world! I recommend them all as both healthy and tasty, so feel free to try each one and enjoy-- let's be hydrated, people!

Picture 1: This is perhaps my favorite "enhanced" water. Introduced to me by Ms Marla Bird, though I should have noticed other hippies drinking it for years, it's a sort of home-made vastly superior version of Gatorade. It tastes great, and is super nourishing and extra hydrating, so this is usually the first jar of water I drink in the morning to point the rest of my day in a good direction. In this 2 quart jar that I drink all my water in (reminds and encourages me to keep drinking!) I add:

1 squeezed half lime, 1 pinch of salt, and 1 Tbs of sorghum or real maple syrup. I am currently using syrup tapped from Marla's trees on her farm in the deep Ozark woods, because it is the yummiest stuff ever, and because I love the idea that my grown baby is therefore physically made of my friend's tree sap. :)

Picture 2: Most embarrassing of my water beverages, I'll admit to this one next since it involves actual store-bought Gatorade, which has inferior sweeteners and dye in it, but which I occasionally crave anyway. A friend of mine used to put the Gatorade's at the store next to the toxic products they looked just like (anti-freeze, for example) to point out to shoppers how unnatural the beverage is, so yes, I am aware of the irony here, and yes, I highly recommend the first beverage to this one. That said, I think of this as my junk-food water, and when I want something quick, easy, and appealing, I opt for this. It's basically 1/4 Gatorade (I do at least avoid the ones with the red dye, for what it's worth), and 3/4 filtered water. Always filter your water, avoiding as much of the chemicals, fluoride, chlorine, and other people's prescription drugs as possible!

Picture 3: Keepin' it fresh with Chlorophyll! This one I've done my whole life, since my mom drank it though all her pregnancies on the advice of her midwives, and now I'm drinking it again on the advice of mine. Chlorophyll is a cleanser, keeping your blood happy and healthy. It is also a dark green food, meaning it's high in iron which is great for women in general and extra great for pregnancy, since it is a great support for anemia. And since it's an iron source that comes from food rather than a capsule, it isn't constipating! Plus, it tastes all fresh and green and delicious! This is a jar of water with 2 Tbs. of chlorophyll-- drink one a day!

Picture 4: Coconut-Orange-Shake! So nourishing, so yummy, such a treat. It's 1/4 can of coconut milk, 1 cup of orange juice, and the rest of the jar filled with sparkling water. I never get tired of this one, it's a treat!

Picture 5: Cranberry juice and water, a tart treat for the girl with the questionable urinary tract! This one is more medicinal so I don't drink it all the time, but I do like its tangy zing, so it's nice to add into the mix sometimes. Cranberry is perfect for UTI's, so if you tend toward them, it's great for that, and if you like something slightly sour, its great for that too! Just remember that we're talking pure cranberry juice, fresh or from concentrate (I use a bottle of concentrate that I keep in the fridge), NOT the kind from the store with extra words attached like "drink" or "cocktail." If your cranberry "juice" has other juices or sugar in it, it is doing more harm to your urinary tract than good. This picture is a mix of a full jar of filtered water and 2 Tbs. concentrated cranberry juice.

Picture 6: Emergen-C, my fix-all for draggy days. Feeling tired? Emergen-C. Coming down with something? Emergen-C. Weather changing? Emergen-C. It's 1,000 mg of Vitamin C, coupled with plenty of other nourishing good things, and I swear by it for everything from slow starting mornings to the biggest monster colds. Also, it comes in a cute little convenient package that just pours right into your water jar easy as pie and tastes so good I'd just drink it every day for fun if it didn't have slightly diuretic qualities when consumed that often! This is one jar of water and one packet of Emergen-C. The pictured flavor is citrus, but it comes in all kinds of great flavor variations, so pick the one you like and boost up your immune system-- yum!

Picture 7: Pure indulgence, almost too pricey to justify (but I still manage to do so), super hydrating, and the thing I am currently addicted to-- Coconut Water! Completely different than the coconut milk concoction I was advocating earlier, coconut water is bought by the jar or pop-open can at your local grocery or health food store, and is super hydrating and nourishing. (Try a little googling of the benefits of coconut sometime to see why I tout its goodness so much). If I could afford it I'd suck down one of these per day, but at around 2.50 a can, I try to only give in to my cravings every other day or two. You'll notice that I've selected the kind with the pulp included, this is not a health choice, and the non-pulp kind is always sitting right there on the shelf next to it, but it's really the little bites of coconut that I'm going for. Maybe it's my aversion to drinking rearing its ugly head again, but any drink I can chew on is the best in my opinion! If you've got a little spare change burning a hole in your pocket and want to be nice to your body, skip the Starbucks one morning and pick yourself up a coconut water-- your mouth and your body will thank you!

If we are what we eat, then in creating our own best lives, a conscious effort to build up our bodies with good food and beverages is a great starting point for every hand made life. So as it was put to me I will reflect it outward and say, let's all be in the water and of the water! Yay for H2O!

 

In the Water and Of the Water

   I am going to tell you how I pray. Like most things I do, it's a sacred ritual only to me, since I made it up for myself. But then I suppose somethings, those things are the most important to the maker-upper. Having been raised in a conservative-charismatic Christian church, praying to me has always involved a lot of speaking in tongues, yelling, falling down, dancing, laughing, crying, and prophesying. What a show! And I love that. I don't quite know what to do with myself in more mainstream churches that don't do that. Still, for myself, the opposite approach has proved more useful. Perhaps I picked it up in Quaker meetings on the East Coast. Perhaps it came to me in Amish church where, since I don't speak German, I had many long hours on a skinny wooden bench to go deeply into my own thoughts. I think mostly though, my being an artist, so constantly focused on creation and output, is what drove me inward and toward stillness in my prayer time.

    So here's how it goes for me. I try to keep a practice of prayer each day (which works for stretches of time, and is then forgotten for stretches of time), in which I simply light candles and am quiet. Pretty common, I assume, but I'm not exactly meditating, just trying to be quiet, and to listen. I picture myself being filled up. I figure I spend about 23 hours and 50 minutes the rest of the day putting out energy, requests, demands, expressions and statements-- so for these 10 minutes, I can be a vessel being filled, rather than one pouring out. So no mantra, no prayer requests, no visualizations, just open hands, open heart, outer and inner mouth clamped shut, in a place of reception. Some days it's just a break I don't want to take time for, and some days it creates a real sense of connection, but it's a good practice when I'm in the habit.

    For my real prayer time though, this is just the foundation. When I want to pray, and I mean really pray-- like I need some serious answers or I have a major bone to pick, I go to the woods. I don't think you can do major spiritual work in your own house, because it's just too full of every emotion you've already felt, and all the things you need to do. Also, if your version of God is one of the pure evocation of Creator, I think a feeling of connection is greatly helped by being nestled in nothing but pure creation. So, the woods. I find a place where I know I won't be disturbed (and sometimes I'm doing this in the dead of winter, so that helps), set myself down with my blanket and pillow, and take in all my surroundings. I have prepared myself by eating lightly, and by not speaking yet that day, if it can be helped. This means I usually go out early, and notify my partner beforehand that I won't be my usual chatty self (he doesn't mind the break!). I bring nothing but water, a pencil, and paper. The pencil and paper are NOT for doodling, journaling, or any busy work, they are ONLY to write down what I am told so that when I get my answer, I can commit it to memory accurately, and leave. I spend maybe 10 minutes pouring my heart out to the Universe, to God. Sometimes I am begging for help-- "please remove the panic attacks that continue to plague my life!" Sometimes I am just seeking direction-- "what is my path? What is my focus? What is this season of my life? Where should I plant my feet and energy?" And occasionally, I am raging with anger-- "Why does everyone else in the world get loving parents then partners and children and here I am at 30 with F*%#ING NOTHING?!" Either way, after the rant, I quiet down and JUST listen. Thoughts come up, and I say inside "I am listening." Woodsey adorable animals snuffle by and I say "thank you, I am listening."

    It usually takes a few hours, one or two at the least, and sometimes four or five, but eventually my mind is done babbling. The world is quiet with me. I open up, I am connected, and I finally have ears to hear. A faith healer once said to me that healing is 100% available 100% of the time, we just have to touch it. I think communication with the Universe at large works the same way. Now, we are all different, we all give and recieve in our own way. But here is how things happen for me. In that place of stillness, after I've waited and soaked it in, I always, always get my answer. For me, it is a dialogue that I can hear in my head, much like you might hear a conversation that you are playing over for yourself, except these are new words, and when I am spoken to there is a resonance that feels similar to standing next to a giant bonging gong. Occasionally I get an tentative answer that doesn't come with that resonant sensation, and then I know that's just my own head, trying to speed up the process. Am I sounding a little crazy? A little too woo-woo spirit-worldy? If so, I assure you this isn't part of my daily conversation, and I get that perhaps it's a little much for a lot of people, but if we're all being honest, and what's the point in communicating if we're not, then this is what I do at my most vulnerable place, and this is where my guide posts come from, and there is a point to my story, so the intent is, I promise, in no way preachy.

    As an example of quiet time turn-outs, I once went into the woods to tell God I'd had it, and we were essentially breaking up. That was the "I'm 30 and as yet without love, practically raised by wolves, a starving to the point of a showdown," rant that I mentioned earlier. There was an embarrassing amount of cursing, a slew of furious accusations, and possibly a few threats. I almost didn't even stay for my listening time because I'd mostly just come to yell, but then I thought I was at least owed a response (see the state of mind I was in? The Universe owed me something!). So I listened, and when the answer came, it was incoherent. Why? Because it was hysterical laughter directed at me. I got this picture in my head of these two light beings in a space of pure bright light, falling out of their chairs onto the ground laughing, and unable to speak to me because of the choking explosions of hilarity. "Very funny," I said, "thank you for caring." They laughed and laughed and laughed some more, and finally getting their breath back, they answered.

    "You already have everything you're so mad about, it is at your fingertips, it's been in motion forever, and it's actually already here. You've already touched it! You're throwing the most ridiculous fit, it's just too funny!" Well, that was my answer, and though I didn't know what those laughers were talking about, I did feel a bit like a raving jerky lunatic, so I wrote down my answer and went on home. It turned out that Josh, who had asked me out once and who I'd turned down months ago, decided the next day to give me one more try. I agreed to have lunch with him, not even thinking of my break down the day before, and here we are, happy as clams, well mated and loving our growing family.

    If you've been reading from the very beginning, you might remember that a miscarriage this summer was the catalyst for starting this writing project. Not an easy process, physically or emotionally, and it definitely took hindsight to see the strength and trust in my body I gained from it, or the even stronger love and attachment that it engendered in Josh for myself and our next start at a baby. There turned out to be one little month between miscarriage and new pregnancy, and in the month I floated around in my own world feeling grief, hope, emptiness, liberation, and just wondering what the future held for all of us. Definitely time for a trip to the woods. When I went this time, my intentions were clear, and I didn't have to wait long, though my answer was a little more cryptic than I'd hoped for. I wanted to know the who-what-when-where-how's of my reproductive future. The answer I got? "Be in the water and of the water." That's it, no visions, no further explainations, and every time I double checked, I got the same response: "be in the water and of the the water." I had a strong urge to roll off the log I was sitting on into the creek below, I wanted very much to be fully submerged, but the water was dirty and snakey, so I wrote down my answer and went home.

    The urge to baptize myself in every creek I drove past (which is a lot in the rural Ozarks) stayed with me to the point of distraction, but I continued not to succumb. It just never seemed quite right. Later that week I suddenly found myself driving 100 miles to the commune I love and come from on a spur of the moment errand that couldn't be put off. There, I found a pile of exhausted people just back from a long festival and in lazy recovery mode. "Let's go to the creek!" I said, and they were less than enthusiastic. It's a longish walk down a very rutted hill, and no one was interested. "Let's go to the creek!" I said again, and still nothing. After about 10 minutes I gave it one more try "I'm going to the creek!" I announced, and gathered up my things to set off. Like the Pied Piper, I looked behind me to find a few people straggling along despite their protests, and we managed to pick up a few more along the way. At Lick Creek we swim naked in the sunshine, and everyone who has been there knows it's a sacred place. Everyone swam, everyone soaked up the sun, everyone was refreshed and happy, and I stayed under the water until the moon came out, dunking and dunking, separating the old from the new, until I came out covered in creek dirt, shiney clean.

    That turned out to be the last warm day-- 77 degrees that day, and 40 the next. That next day was Solstice, when I found myself so grumpy I peed on a test in my car and got the when's and how's I'd been asking for... we are expecting our first child in May. :)

*First three creek images are poached from the lovely Ms Marla Bird, fourth is Summer Solstice at Lick Creek.

Made from Scratch in the Extreme-- We're Growing a Person!

    Yup, that's what I said. It's a... baby! Given our shared hippie-style/intensely religious upbringings (yes these things can go together), Josh and I have always been inclined, even as children, to creating our surroundings, both in spirit and in material form. Many times we've lacked patience or forethought and ended up manifesting things that no one including us would want, but we're learning as we go (aren't we all), and nothing makes us happier than bringing a new object or meal or idea into the world at the end of the day.

    I say that to say this: growing a person is a whole new ballgame, and I'm pretty sure we don't even fully grasp what is happening yet! What a thing to go from a lifetime of intense control issues to a quivering mass of exhaustion and nausea who cannot, no matter how much will-power is exerted, go for that regular walk in the woods, nor ever look at lasagna again. What a thing to watch one's own familiar physical shape morph from hard and thin, to soft, to round, and then to a swelling over ripe expanse of stretched skin, like a piece of fruit left too long on the vine, or perhaps like a girl in some fairy tale who has witlessly swallowed the waxing moon. This body over which I have exerted so much control-- the one that has carried me through 34 years of life with easy consistency, the one who bounced around as a cheerleader, marched for miles on its toes as a Kiltie, worked on farms, and danced almost a decade of 8 hour shifts-- is now a servant of life, and works for the ever creating universe, rather than just me. I thought I would hate it. I spent a long time fearing it. I do not like to lose control.

    Turns out, I love it. And I don't mean I love it like "isn't it so fun to get extra attention and foot rubs," though that is fun and I can always use more foot rubs. I mean I love it like I love breathing, or the best book, or the exact right food or song or word of comfort, at the exact right moment. The baby at the end of this journey is exciting and surreal to think of, I admit, but currently it is the process itself that I am enthralled with, and the loss of that control, which I had had a death-grip on since childhood, that I am so amazed by. Inconvenience and physical woes aside, I have never felt more in the flow of life, so willing to live (as opposed to just not willing to give up), or so able to sit with whatever is happening, be it discomfort or almost overwhelming joy. I spent 15 years in therapy working on  my anxiety-- needed and worth it, I assure you-- and this new chapter in life is healing and shifting me as much as another 15 years would. A line from an Alanis Morrisette song has been cycling through my head lately which I think sums up the present day nicely: "The moment I let go of it, was the moment I touched down."

    Alright, have I waxed poetic enough? Are we all swimming in too much sugar? Well it had to be said and now it's out of my system, so there. Ready for something more entertaining? Let's share the story of how I told Josh!

    When I found out I was pregnant the first time, it happened over a long weekend where he was away and would return home on no less than Father's Day. So after an agonizing 3 days alone in my house with no phone privileges (I cannot keep my own secrets to save my life so my only course of action was to quarantine myself), I wrapped up his childhood teddy bear, scribbled a note in a Father's Day card, leashed up the dog, and dragged Josh out into the woods. At our favorite spot by the creek, I gave him his gift and sat back to watch his face. Unwrapping the bear which I thought was a dead giveaway, Josh said offhandedly "huh, I used to have a bear just like this," and set it aside. When he read the card (signed "from Jesse, the dog and cats, and your first child who is due in February), I watched his face which bore a look of annoyance. I knew the look well, it's the one that says "why does this girl insist on giving cheesy gifts for EVERY holiday and signing cards from house pets?".  Then he shifted to confusion face-- the one that says "I have forgotten how the English language works and this card makes no sense to me." Upon his third reading, I got the happy face I was waiting for, along with a lot of bouncing and hugging, and a surprising slew of joyful curse words.

 

    This time, I found out I was pregnant while driving home in my car from teaching an art class. I'd been crying like a crazy person for two days, and when I pulled the afore mentioned Alanis Morrisette cd out of my stereo, snapped it in half, and threw it out the window for skipping at a spot where it had been skipping for years, I had a sudden moment of clarity. "You're pregnant," a loud voice in my crazy head informed me! I pulled onto the side of the busy road, snatched the spare pregnancy test from the glove compartment, peed on it and all over my skirt, and saw two pink lines in about two seconds. Phew! No need to pay for more therapy, I'm just exploding with hormones!

    Since apparently all positive pregnancy tests coincide with holidays for me, this day was the Autumn Solstice-- a perfect excuse to drag Josh out into the woods again and smack him with another great surprise! I thought about re-enacting the first time we'd been here, but that seemed a little weird, not to mention lacking in creativity, so I went understated this time, and it was perfect. Under the guise of forcing him to participate in the celebration of yet another holiday that he didn't think warranted a hike, I marched him out to a different wooded hill, handed him some ice cream, and sat us down on a bench to watch the sunset. We talked about the end of summer, the beginning of harvest time, and once we were alone, after the people who I'm pretty sure were engaged in a drug deal walked away, I gave him his package.

    Nothing so overthought this time, it was a small tin holding the positive test, and a small simple note. Josh and I have been in love of late with a band called Medicine for the People, and in particular a song of theirs called Manifesto. The chorus at the end that sticks in your head in the most beautiful way goes "Don't waste your hate, rather gather and create. Be of service, be a sensible person, use your words and don't be nervous. You can do this, you've got purpose. Find your medicine and use it." We'd been singing it under our breath for weeks, so the note over the test simply said "we can do this, we've got purpose."

    Once he got it, which still took a minute, everything changed, and here we are on the path to parenthood. Talk about a hand made life!

Here is yet another attempt to link the song I mentioned for your clicking convenience! If you can't get there from here, go the old fashioned route and look for Medicine for the People Manifesto on www.youtube.com.

   " title="" target="_self">Manifesto

 

 

Down to Business-- $2,000 Wedding Budget

   

    This is it, people! The last wedding post before we move on with the rest of hand making our lives together! I know it's been a lot of information, but hey, a wedding is a big project, and I hope the pictures, DIY's, and piles of suggestions have been helpful to your event, sanity, and wallet.

    With all the work done, and the day itself wrapped up nicely, it's time to get down to the real numbers to show that not only can a large celebration be had at a relatively low price, but it can be the best day ever, with no need to break the bank. When I tell people I did my whole wedding for two thousand dollars, they immediately assume I had a small, intimate affair. When I tell them I was hosting almost 200 people, they assume that what I mean when I say it cost so little, is that it cost that much-- not counting the food-- or not counting the dress-- or not counting the ceremony, or the reception, or the location... because surely the universe cannot create such bounty from so tiny a seed packet! When I assure them that all costs were included, the people who know my finally let it sink in, then regale me with a litany of how much their weddings cost them-- a speech that never fails to depress me! The people I assure of my costs who don't know me, purse their puckery lips and end the conversation pretty quickly-- a sign, I'm pretty sure, that they simply think I'm lying. So! Without further delay, I present to you... the budget...

Start to Finish Budget

The $2,000 Wedding

Invitations: $200 

Gifts: $ 250

Venue Rental: $89

Dress: $200

Veil: $25

Photos: $200

Cake: $150

Food: $400

Grooms Clothing: $150

Flowers: $6

Tablecloths: $50

Sheets: $10

Decorations (paper, ribbon): $30

Bridesmaids/ Groomsmen: $150/ $250

Lanterns: $25

Harpist: $200

Tableware: $75

If you're doing the math, remember to discount the $400 spent on the brides maide's and grooms men's clothing. They went with tradition on this and paid for their own apparel, I just included their price to illustrate the fact that while you're saving money, your wedding party can to, so long as you don't drag them into the nearest bridal store, force them into your favorite childhood fairy tale costume, and then demand they pull out their check books to pay for it.

Still adding things up with me? Then you've probably come to our grand total, $2,060. I know what you're thinking, this is $60 over budget. First I'd like to say that if in planning a huge event, you go $60 over budget, I still call that a job well done! Second, you might recall from the bridal clothing section that a certain thread conscious groom got himself a during-ceremony outfit, as well as a post-ceremony outfit, and it was that post ensemble that cost $60, so if it isn't counted (and I don't think it should be since it was unnecessary and is now a weekly part of his wardrobe), they the grand total does in fact come to exactly $2,000-- the perfect price tag promised and delivered!

Now, if you're asking yourself whether I've perhaps fudged the numbers here, left something out, or otherwise bent my budget in some way, let me assure you that this list covers everything from sparkly dress to chicken and dumplings. If you're saying to yourself that this must be a fluke and that this much fun cannot normally be had for this amount of money, let me assure again that it has been done and can be again. My spending what I predicted I would was not a coincidence, it was the result of my sitting down beforehand and writing out just what I intended to spend on each needed thing, then going out and hunting and negotiating until the prices I found matched the ones I already had in my head. Where gaps were left by a lack of cash flow, I filled them in with creativity and hand made goods, and in the end, this made for such a fun, fantastical, lovely day, I wouldn't change any of it for the world, even if I had an unlimited cash flow. The work was worth it, and the creativity and joy of creation I got to participate in along the way added greatly to my overall experience, as well as not dipping into my savings account. Have faith that the universe can provide you with just as much bountiful fun in the sun, and with just as small a seed packet. It worked for me and it will work for you-- this is what the handmade life is all about! Now go think of something to celebrate, gather up your scrap fabric and glue, and create the very day you've always wanted to live!