November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 6

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 6



Today I am thankful for the Election Day!  Of course I'm going to talk about freedom, voting, rights, duty, patriotism, love of country, homeland,  mom's apple pie, whatever, and I certainly will: but not today.  Today I am truly thankful that all of the campaign ads and hostility between opposing sides is over for at least a little while.  

Does that sound trite?  I don't mean for it to.   The political process in this country has turned into a long, drawn out, stressful and ugly thing.  We as a nation need to stop and catch a breath.  This war between the blue and the red is tearing us up.  We need healing as a nation, and an awakening to the truth, not more mind numbing media propaganda and mud slinging which only instigates more division and more hostility between us.

I'm not deluding myself.  I know that soon the campaigns will start again.  They start earlier and earlier every election cycle.  I know that all the social media outlets will continue to have arguments and the winners will gloat and the losers will whine.  I know the news outlets will spin, spin, spin!  I know!  I know!  I know!  But, for at least a little while, as far as big media campaign commercials, national or local, paid ads, private ads and the roadsides being littered with signs and posters, we will be granted a reprieve from the inundation we've endured -- at least for a little while.  May it be more peaceful than thought possible and last longer than expected!

So let it be written; so let it be done!

(photo credit)

Mobility

Part 2 of Little House in Texas

Not all small houses are portable like ours.  We have a travel trailer.  It seemed most practical for us since we are en route to a different destination at the moment and we really didn't have time or the means to find or build anything else when we were ready to move.

Having a home that can go with us is quite a unique experience.  There is a real sense of being in touch with our freedom  like we have never experienced before.  Not only are we not anchored to a house on a fixed property,  we are also able to pretty much up and go on a whim.  My husband is really not an "up and goer" or a "whimmy" kind of guy (new word for the day, there)  but we could do it if we wanted to or needed to.

We lived in a "regular" home and had a "normal" life for many years before we made the change.  Any time we had ever moved prior to this move, we would have a different home, structure, neighborhood, all of that stuff, obviously.  It's expected and it's actually a big part of transitioning into a new area.  This time, when we left our home of eighteen years, we moved only about a block away.  We moved into the one we have now and we lived in it there for the better part of a year before we moved away.  For that stage of the move, really, only the size of the home had changed.

I'll have more to say about that stage of moving into something much smaller in future posts.

When the time came to move away from our town we simply hauled 'er off. I must say, it was an interesting experience.  To begin with, all of our worldly goods were in transit in one spot all together going down the road at high speeds sometimes, over bumps and through mountain passes.  That provoked a strange and stimulating set of emotions right there!  Then, when we arrived, we set it up, leveled it and BOOM!  Home!  Familiarity, comfort and convenience as if we had never moved.  It took a lot of the work out of moving to say the least.

It was the easiest move ever, yet very weird.  All the familiar surroundings were evaporated before our eyes the second the window shades were opened in the morning.  It was very disorienting.  Not bad, necessarily, just strange.  Perhaps any move after living nineteen years in the same area would be equally disorienting, but it just seemed pretty weird to have the old familiar and the totally unfamiliar all in the same field of vision.  It was amazingly exhilarating, as well, even if it was a bit sad because almost all of the familiar faces, the friends and people I would normally have shared things like this with were over a thousand miles away.

Fast forward to today.  We have been here for almost four months.  It is still not exactly familiar, but I absolutely love the area.  It's a great location for us for now.  We are near a small town, but not too near. Our place feels very rural despite the fact that we are only about a mile out of town.  It's very green and beautiful and for the most part I can get to what I need to get to easily and quickly.  I am become oriented.  I know where east and west are at least, if I stop and think about it for a minute.  I know my way around well enough now to be trusted to be let out alone.  I still haven't met anyone, really, and I feel like the outsider I am, but all that stuff rights itself over time.  Church will be "family" again some day and neighbors will wave and holler.

So that brings us up to now.  This blog will deal with the different aspect of living in a small home, from my perspective, for as long as we live in one.  A few posts, because it will probably take more than one, will be in answer to the one comment I heard more than any other when people found out how we were living: "In less than three months you will all be on each other's nerves and you will hate it."  There will probably be a few to prepare you for what people are likely to say, or think, how to deal with your family and friends who react badly, or you expect might react badly.  Also, at some point, probably frequently, I will talk about travel trailers and the ups and downs associated with living full time in one.  I'll talk about issues of storage, power and lights, weather, buying a used RV, and whatever else comes up as I experience life here.

I would like to close on a high note and plainly say that I love it.  I really do.  It's an adventure!  It's different!  It's great!

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 5

Day 5:  I'm thankful for my pick-up truck.  Not just that it's pretty, which it is, and fast, which it IS, or that it's helpful, or a needful thing, or convenient or anything, but that it is a constant reminder to me that God answers prayer.  

Once upon a time a long time ago, my husband and I wrote a prayer list of things we wanted.  We prayed about them and tucked the list away.  I had completely, totally  forgotten about it.  I think he had, too, judging by the reaction he had when we came across it many years later.  We were getting ready to move and were going through some of the old boxes from up in the attic, and inside one of them was the list.  

When we wrote it we had very little money, and even though some of the items on our list were not really big items, we just didn't have the means to get them on our own.   I have forgotten most of what was on it, and I am sure I have probably gotten and gotten rid of some of them.  For instance, I remember a microwave being on it, and I know I have had several microwaves over the years.  

One thing I do know is that a Dodge Ram pick-up truck was on it.  That was huge for us, way out of the picture.   I vaguely remember talking about the fact that they are gas guzzlers ,and my husband said that when the time came that we could get a nice truck like that we'd be able to put gas in it, too, and we put it on the list.

So, anyway, the list was stowed and forgotten.

I am embarrassed to report that I didn't remember that list, and I didn't remember to give God proper thanks for it when we finally got it, brand new in 2006.  Now, every time I look at that wonderful truck it's a reminder that God is faithful even when I am not, and it reminds me to be diligent to give Him the glory in the small, easily forgotten things.

Psalms 103:2 - "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."

Deut. 8:1-10

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 4

Yes, I already messed up.  Four days into my thirty days of thanksgiving and I have already missed a day, so I'm posting Day 4 and Day 5 on the same day this time.  Hopefully I only do this once this month.  I realize it's sort of cheating, but my husband was home and we were very busy goofing off.   Life takes precedence over blogging, especially when I have him around.

Day 4: I'm thankful to God for my husband.  

He's not as grumpy as this makes him look.   :)  He won't hold still for a picture, though. so it's hard to get a good one for posting.  I think this one is kind of cute.  

He's the greatest.  I am blessed!   He's the bestiest and he's my favorite!  I love the goofy little inside jokes and things that go unsaid because we both "already know."  Little gestures, habits we have, traditions we've established between us and the kids are what make life good.  We're awesome!  Sure, we have our moments where we get on each other's nerves, or we disagree or whatever, but those moments are fewer and farther between the longer we're together.

Some days it feels like we have always been together, and all of our shared time makes us comfortable and content.  Other days it seems like we only just met.  We couldn't have been married as long as we have, could we?  It flew by!  Sometimes I still look in his eyes like a teen age girlfriend and wonder how I can still be so silly in love with the big goof.  The length of time doesn't matter at all.  We will always be together.

He's cute, too.  That doesn't hurt.  =]

I don't want to stop soon so that it seems like I'm not giving him enough time or whatever, but there's not enough space on the internet to finish it, so I'll just have to stop.

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 3

Today I'm going to keep it short.  I am thankful for my new phone.  I can connect with the rest of the world again!  Sometimes it gets plain lonesome when you're in a new place where you don't know anyone local and you can't call and talk to anyone you do know.  My truck driver in shining armor got me a new phone for his birthday.  Alas, I am back!

(photo credit)

Little House in Texas

Music by Iona

I am reassigning this blog.  Well, I suppose it's not really a reassignment, but more of a re-dedication to it's previously assigned purpose.  I have decided that it is a place to write about and perhaps document our home and lifestyle, because it is considered unique, if not weird.  I'm going to dedicate it to smaller living, and even though I hate to use catchy little cliche' phrases, I am going to use one, just for the sake of clarity: this will be about living in a "Tiny Home."

It is our goal to live on some acreage.  Until we do, most of what we do here where we are right now is subject to change.  Regardless of where we are, we do still live in a small house and the benefits and challenges are very real and present and noteworthy no mater how temporary the surroundings, so blog I will.  Maybe someone will find some bit of information I put in here to be helpful somehow.

Tiny is relative.  If it's big enough then it's not tiny.  There are a lot of people living in spaces much smaller than the one we live in.  Some because they like it, some because they have no choice, some to de-clutter their minds more than their lives, some to make some kind of a  statement.  Unfortunately, it's the latter who have "named" the "movement" and added all of the specialty phrases and niche' jargon that I find so repulsive.  It has taken all the normal and real out of it in favor of cleverness or politics or whatever their motive is.  At any rate, people have their own reasons for living in a small house.

We are a combination of the first two reasons, mostly; we like it and we had to.  We had talked about it, or rather, we had considered and imagined about it, never really planning. 

-- I should add here that given the opportunity to re-do the transition phase, I would certainly have done things a little differently.  Planning the transitional phase was dern near impossible because we had no idea what we were in for, but SOME amount of planning more than what we had would have been advantageous.   Gearing your life down, no matter your mindset or method, is hard, hard, hard:  hard physically, hard emotionally and hard organizationally, if that's a word.  I will certainly address these issues in this blog at some point in the future, but it is far too integral to this whole scenario to let it go in this first blog with no mention at all. In my own defense, and perhaps as a little pat on the back, the move came off painlessly and with little upset or drama.  That was no small feat.-- 

In truth, in my own mind I planned, because it was always appealing to me, but we didn't sit down one day and decide to cut back and pare down and live small.  The details of our life led us to it one day, and we made the switch.  We made our decision and the bulk of our planning revolved around getting rid of unnecessary things and acquiring a new place to live.  We did, and we now live in something in the neighborhood of four-hundred square feet.  That would be myself, my husband, our two teenage sons and our dog.  I think that qualifies me to speak on the subject a little.  

I'll come at this subject from a different angle than what has become so popular.  You'll probably never hear me mention my "carbon footprint" and seldom anything about the environment outside the bounds of discussions concerning hugelkultur or permaculture or how such things might concern us or effect us personally in our living like this.  If I ever mention any kind of alternative energy or something like that, it will be because of cost or availability, efficiency, necessity or whatever, not because of peak oil, the environmental impact of drilling or greenhouse gasses.  We have hand-me-downs, ingenuity and clever inventions, not recycleables, repurposed or upcycled items around here.  If that's your bag, no problem, you blog it, but don't harass me about it.  My lack of damage to the environment and my intelligent use of what has been given to me is because of my love of it and my awareness of my role as a steward of all that God has put into my hands.  May it ALL bring Him glory.

I believe that just because culturally we are a society that thinks living in a small house is not a normal thing to do does NOT MEAN that it is not a normal thing to do.  For many generations and throughout history, more people lived small than lived big, as a rule.  Amazingly, it was enough.  Entire families survived and thrived in four-hundred square feet of space or less, without their four-hundred square feet each of private space.  I'm not saying it's the only way, I can see it's advantages, and I'm not frowning on anyone for doing life differently.  It's your life, your call.  I just don't think it's weird to be doing this and I'm a little caught off guard by the number of people who really think it is.  

One of the things I consider about this is that people need "big indoors" because most of what they do for business or pleasure happens there.  At this point this is true of us, as well, and I am very aware of why more indoor space would be preferable for many people in this generation and culture.  It is our design and plan to be in a place where more of our lives, business and activity, can be conducted in the outdoors, greatly lessening the need for a lot of indoor living space. We will add space onto our indoor square footage in the form of a shop or a studio or whatever our needs dictate as time goes by, but for our actual living quarters, I don't expect we will be needing a lot.

Having laid all that ground work, this will be the official first entry: Mobility.  But not until tomorrow, because this post is already pretty long.  Mobility will likely be the subject of a few blogs.  I don't expect we will be mobile forever, but right now we are, and there is much to say about this arrangement.  

For this post, however, let me close with a wonderful quote from a favorite author, one that I have quoted many, many times, because it seems so fitting to me for my life and especially the way we now live.  In the words of Thorin Oakenshield as penned by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien:  "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 2

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 2

I will try to keep these posts short, at least shorter than the first one.  I also wanted to mention that these things I am thankful for are in no particular order.  It's just how it comes to me.  

Today I am thankful for: Hope.

hope (hp)
v.intr.
1. To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.
2. Archaic To have confidence; trust.
v.tr.
1. To look forward to with confidence or expectation: 
2. To expect and desire. Synonym - expect



“Hope itself is like a star- not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity. ” 
― Charles H. Spurgeon

I don't know if there is such a thing, but I think I'm naturally hopeful.  I'm always expecting wonderful things.  On dark days and in low places I always remember the hope that lifts me and brightens my life.  I started to say that I developed this supernatural ability as a child, but it was the Lord all along.  He directed my steps before I was aware of Him in times that I may not have survived otherwise.  He is so faithful and merciful.  

Some people are hopeless, or at least they think they are.  I believe that Hell, the absence from God, is the only place that is truly hopeless, but some people really feel like they have no hope.  I can't imagine a life like that!  There is ALWAYS hope in this life.  Look for that little light.  The cracking that you may think is shattering your life is only there to allow the light to come in.  Look for it.  It is there.  It comes from within, because that's where the Lord lives.
Proverbs 10:28 - "The hope of the righteous is gladness, But the expectation of the wicked perishes."

Hope changes everything.  

*If you do not know the Lord, please feel free to contact me and I will be happy to introduce you to Hope.

(photo credit)