front yard

I'd prefer ocean front. Atlantic ocean, to be specific. But this will do for now. I guess.

keep baby safe

Mornings at home are easy. Sundrenched and slow. I sip coffee and listen to the radio. Juniper is happy to play, feed, then fall asleep for a few hours.

It’s the afternoons away from home when it hits me. Lethargy. Weight. A hollow fullness of the gut. Senseless anxiety resulting in a fatigue so strong it’s as if my body is moving through syrup and not air. There is something wrong deep inside my abdomen. Yesterday, out shopping in town, bent over my cart, I become disoriented in the store. Dizzy with the danger of all the strangers around me. Every single one of them is a bit off. My body stiffens when I pass them, they all have arms to reach out and touch the baby, to grab the baby, harm the baby. What am I there for? Wandering around on the border of panic, feeling as if I may fall over. Rational thought tells me I’m ok, I will not pass out, but rational thought is such a pushover, extremely susceptible to the convincing powers of anxiety.

I pull through. Always do. Go to the library. The new one with the stairs. Somehow I make it up them, grab the book, walk back down. It takes all my power to let the sight of the railing pass through me as I ascend and descend, to ignore the scary drop to the hard tiled floor. How does one ignore gravity? Of course, more attention is paid to something being actively ignored, and in so ignoring, quite the opposite effect is attained. The muscles clench, the bowels tie themselves in knots, in tatters, in muddy mats like a messy head of hippie hair. My innards. Dreadlocks. Locked with dread.

This is how it is. My role as mother. Walk around in constant computation of danger to baby. And, everything means danger. Worse, every possible horrific outcome, I witness inside my mind. I am in a constant state of trauma, grief, agony over everything that could possibly happen, because somehow my brain can’t tell that these images are simply meant as warnings, are not actually happening.

a mommy blog moment

She is sleeping. Thank you Royal Wood. Thank you coffee. Thank you sunshine. I have a rare, alert, calm, cozy, beautiful moment to myself.

don't look down

Squanch took this a few weeks ago. Happens often. No Big Deal.

So it's nighttime in the woods right now and while sitting reading, sleeping baby in my arms, it suddenly occurred to me I was going to have to, ahem,  poot.


Usually, I do it during the day. How could I possibly schedule such an event? You would too if you had an outhouse. Believe me, it's a terrifying event to use the shitter at night. The dark is scary enough as it is, but add the odd nearby coyote sighting, or midnight howl fest (feast?), and it becomes terrifying.


Squanch is especially good in that he will often lead me out into the darkness and wait outside the outhouse, contemplating his old life as a mythological creature. Bigfoot not afraid. 


Of course Squanch is sleeping at this moment, and so my chaperon this time is the dog, the wimp who was freaking out at the meer presence of tin foil earlier today.


I maneuver the baby into her crib, shove on my big boots, put on a head lamp and run about 100 feet into the woods.


That's when it happens. Something more terrifying than coyotes. I shine the light into the hole.


Think of everything you have flushed in 6 months. Now imagine peering into a pit of everything you have flushed in 6 months.

Ya. Living a running water free life is not for everyone. It may seem idyllic, and it is for me. That is until I forget a very simple rule: DON'T LOOK DOWN!

Mushaboom

Next time I'm feeling shitty I'm gonna play the song Mushaboom and remind myself Fesit wrote it after travelling into the future to life as I know it right now.

woof meow poop

Why have I suddenly taken up blogging? Because a few days ago I realized the most coherent sentence to come out of my mouth all day was to my dog Wellington: "Dodo, you want a kookie?"


A few more tidbits from the transcripts of my daily life with a cat, a dog and a newborn baby:


Me: Bika Bika want a brushie? (to Milo the cat)


***
Me: Dodo, no runned away, dingdong dodo! Go fo a wok dodo?


Wellington: *wags tail* (this being the most coherent thing I hear all day)


Me: "Git the schquirrel dodo."


***
Juniper: Wah wah cooooo wahh Awhooohunn


Me:  Oh daas baybay, you sad? Dawahweeewahwoz.

As you can see the most I get in return is a muttacular wag of the tail, a reassuring feline narrowing of the eyes, or sphinct-orations from a newborn about the robo-calls scandal in the US of eh! aka Canada.

Humour me?

tiny cocoon

I like this photo we took of Juniper right after coming home from the Whitehorse General Hospital/Spa because it makes it look like I gave birth to a multivitamin instead of a human being sized creature.

no running water

It didn't happen on purpose. We didn't seek out housing that lacked something so fundamental as running water because we were trying to save the world or the whales or the whatevers. This is just how things worked out and I am glad it did because it means we don't live downtown, it means our front yard is a field of horses, followed by a line of trees, followed by a slope, followed by another field of horses, followed by more trees and then the river and then, wait for it, MOUNTAINS!

For example: Early this morning I was outside and I noticed a single line of footprints in the snow. On closer inspection, Squanch attributed them to a fox. This fox makes up the bulk of the traffic in front of our cabin for the last week. Of course there are Raven's in our airspace, they heckle us from time to time, but I can deal with that.

Life without running water. RADICAL Eh? Apparently. It's one of the first things that came up when the issue of a certain neglected northern reserve close to a diamond mine was in the daily news. "How do they live? How deplorable for the government to let them live like that!" I have never been to this reserve, and I don't mean to belittle the issue, but whenever I heard mention of the no running water detail my first thought was: "Big deal."

Because it really isn't a big deal for us. Of course this is only because there are many places we can go to acquire free, clean, safe water.

• BLUE JUGS - Drinking, dishwashing, sponge bathing, face washing, teeth brushing. We have about 6 of them and we refill them at a nearby service station (gas / convenience / laundromat / showering place) where many other beardy locals draw water from as well.
• LAUNDROMAT - Laundry and showering facilities for Me (same place as above)
• WORK - showering facilities for Squanch
• RIVER - summer supply of all non-potable watering needs such as: laundry, watering garden, showering in the bathing house equip with a woodstove for warming water, and this spring, will be equip with a paloma for on demand water heating purposes (all those treeplanting camps we lived/worked/ran are coming in handy). 

Let's be clear:

I miss bathtubs. Words cannot express how spectacular baths feel when you can't have one at will. I am getting goose bumps just thinking about it. Today, I'm listening to Greg Brown while making lasagna and trying to keep the baby happy aka alive and there is a line in one of his songs "I want to buy you the biggest bath tub in the world." And to me, right now, those are the most romantic lyrics ever.

living at the cottage

Home right now  (taken before the snow came, forever ago in fall)

I've spent some of the happiest times at cabins and cottages and I've always wanted to live in one, didn't see why people kept them tucked away as sacred weekend and holiday places, when they could have that feeling all the time and live there.


And so when I get the sense from people that they think I am roughing it HUGE - like impossibly HUGE, like "you have no fucking running water? how do you bathe? where do you go to the bathroom? BUT YOU HAVE A NEWBORN BABY!" - I just have to laugh  because our life is so amazing, so steeped and strong with everything good and everything I believe in.

You may have a cottage or a camp. If not you may have been invited to one at some point in your life. How restorative do times spent in these outdoor focused places feel? How warm and calm and gooey do you feel hugged in the arms of logs, of wood, of the stuff the trees made so you could have a roof over your head?

privy to my privy

Open the door, leap down the two steps of the porch, round the cabin, down the path made in the snow by feet on so many similar pilgrimages, hug bare arms against the cold, open the latch, fling open the door, throw your pants down to your knees (not ankles), don't look down, sit on the clever pink foam warm in the place of toilet seat, pee or poo, more than likely poo, and as you do contemplate the constellations of purposeless tacks in the back of the door where copious amounts of "stupid-ass- sayings" used to reside, put there by someone else.

Somebody else's sayings... Eff that. No, thank you. I'd rather this door be blank than full of Oprahesque phrases and witty Bill Cosbyisms. I'm going to put a pen and paper in there so we can add to the sayings  at our leisure. Will keep you posted on new turd-bits of wisdom so the stupid-ass-ness of the saying are kept in check.

Air freshener in the freshest air in the world. What overkill. I love how nature is making fun of the tree smelling thing by hanging it's own little version adjacent. Our hole doesn't stink unless the frozen poo stalagmite that gets formed from the outhouse not being properly centered over the hole has built itself up close to the opening. Then Squanch has to wait until it gets warm enough to budge it with a broken shovel we used for poolagmite removing purposes only. Too much info, perhaps? Well, just be thankful I didn't take a photo of the glorious thing.