Inspired

If you're a blogger, you've probably gotten "those" looks from friends who don't blog.  "Why," the look clearly says, "would you put that much time and effort into writing when you can...cook, play with the kids, clean the house, watch reality TV,  take a long hot bath, or sit and twiddle your thumbs instead?"

Why, indeed?  I've wondered myself about my compulsion to chronicle the small joys of life.  I've lain awake plotting tomorrow's post when I really should be falling asleep.  I've drifted into consciousness at three a.m. with an idea for a post insistently interrupting much needed R.E.M. sleep.  I've postponed projects just so I can grab my camera and snap the perfect photo.  There's no doubt about it--blogging takes time and energy.

History major that I was, in a long-ago era, I lamented the lack of source material that could have breathed color into the beige chronicles of wars and dynasties that were assigned reading.  History isn't facts and dates.  History is Story.  The story of mistakes and heroism and gambles,  of common footsoldier as well as general, of a peasant wife as well as queen.

So much of the story is lost because no one wrote it down.  My grandmother immigrated from Alsace when she was a young adult.  All by herself, she voyaged to a country where she didn't speak the language and knew almost no one.  My mind just explodes with questions.  Why her and not one of her brothers or sisters?  Was she scared?  How did she learn English? What happened on the trip?  What did she think when she saw the Statue of Liberty?  What was Ellis Island like?  How did she adjust to California?  Did she miss her mother when she birthed twin daughters while she had a fifteen-month-old son running around?  She's not around to answer those questions, so the answers are lost.

So I began to journal in fits and starts over the years--camping trips and vacation experiences and the stories of my sons' birth days.  Vague memories of growing up in a simpler safer environment, among a zillion cousins and various ranches.  I'm more than a name and the dates of the most important days of my life.  My gardening passion and love for my dogs, my cross-stitched ornaments and my quilted wallhangings, my collections of sheep and bunnies and birds, my favorite authors and the books I've read and re-read, my yellow walls and homemade bread--those small details are the brushstrokes that complete the portrait.

My off-and-on journalling evolved into blog format--easy, relatively fast, flexible, illustrated and still sporadic.  Perfect.  Eventually I began writing for more than myself and my family as I shared the Dollhouse Remodel, the Fence Rebuild, Constructing the Pond and Gardening Triumphs.  My little blog has been visited by readers from every corner of the world--from Thailand to Slovenia, from Canada to Brazil.

I wasn't the only one sharing tips and DIY experiences.  The Mommy Bloggers reached out for help and offered support to others.  Decorating blogs sprung up.  Sewing blogs.  Dog training blogs.  I know there are many more categories, but those are my favorites.  And I realized today that we blog not only to document and share, but also to inspire (even if we don't know it).

Because today I visited 525,600 Minutes, the blog of a twenty-two year old volunteering at an orphanage in Haiti for last seven months and I was inspired.  Molly Mackenzie Hightower accomplished more in her brief years than some people will in seven decades.  She wrote occasionally about the future she'll never see and made plans that she's not here to finalize.  But mostly she wrote about the children she worked with, helped, loved and was loved by.  I imagine she began her blog to keep in touch with her family and friends back in the Pacific Northwest, but she ended up leaving us words that celebrate her spirit and comfort the ones left behind.  I don't know why she died, but I know she left a legacy.  We all die.  We don't all make a difference though.  She did.

I couldn't hope to compare to her as I move through my calm and ordinary life and it would be hubris of the worst kind to imagine my teeny corner of the Blogosphere has inspired anyone to do more than cook soup.   As I log on and read through my bloglist and admire the fortitude or creativity or kindness of my blogfriends, I suspect that they don't know how much they are inspiring me.  They've made me more tolerant.  They've helped me be kinder to myself and my family.  They've helped me make my home a nicer place to live.  Little things.  But little things add up. Simple things.  But foundations are built on simple materials.

Thanks, bloggers, for taking the time to build a better world one post at a time.  And if you stuck with me through the whole philosophical rant and you're not ROTFLYAO at me, double thanks! 

Back to our usual trivia tomorrow:  my most recent crafts.  With yummy photos.

Kharma's Lament

First of all, Mom let the wind blow the fence down and I loved having twice the space. Especially since our very nice neighbor has two Bichon Frisees to play with. Happy is pretty carefree, but it took a little time to convince Cooky that I was a nice dog. We all had a good time. I wish my mom would just leave the back door open for me like the very nice neighbor; it was so nice to just be able to walk into her house and see what Happy and Cooky were eating or watching on TV (personally I like the "Dog Whisperer" because there's nothing like Bad Boy to spice up a Friday evening).

Mom knows how much I love to jump, because she put up some short wire fencing for me. It was even more fun to go visit the Bichons then!

Dad took down all but two of the fence panels for me and I loved seeing everything that Happy and Cooky were doing and I could also practice my ferocious bark on the workmen putting in cobbles for the very nice neighbor's front yard. Heh, heh, they didn't know I was teasing them. It was very fun and I don't know why Mom got so upset.

BTW,the grass IS greener on the other side of the fence; it's also longer and much more exciting to pee on!

Just when I didn't think things could get much better, Dad and Erkie ripped out another fence!!! Wow, having a yard three times as big was super-cool. My favorite little girls live next door and they would play with me all the time. We played chase a lot. I even do tricks for them when they don't have any treats for me, just to be nice. It was nice to sit on their back step and watch them eat dinner. I helped them barbecue on their back patio too.

Dad, Mom and Erkie dug up cement blobs for me to play on. I loved jumping over them and racing around them, but playing king-of-the-hill was best of all. They kept on digging up more and more of those cement things. I would have helped them if they'd asked, 'cause I know it was hard word for them,vbut they did it all themselves and told me to go away.

Then they had some workers come and grind up a stump. I didn't get to go out and bark at them, but once Mom cleaned up all the loose shredded stuff, I had a great hole to lie in. I looked so cool sunning myself there. I know the Bichons were jealous of me.

I didn't mind when my family started putting up the fence again, because there were lots of panels missing. When they put all the panels up, they must have known how much I enjoyed visiting the neighbors because they left nice holes to crawl through. I loved teasing Mom. She'd be working in the yard and get distracted and I'd crawl into the neighbor's yard and wait until Mom would miss me. She couldn't figure out how I disappeared at first! I was laughing my head off. When she called me, she was pretty surprised to see me come under the fence.

She made it even more fun by packing some nice soft dirt in the holes then. Wow! Digging through the dirt to go visit felt just super. I think Mom must have felt a little guilty about all those walks we've been missing. Hey, it works for me!

Then I must have done something wrong.

They took away all my cement blogs. All the fence wire got rolled up. They put rocks on top of all that soft dirt and yelled at me when I tried to dig. I know the neighbors are missing my visits. Mom is even wrecking my nice sunning hole. She's adding dirt and plants and keeping me away from it. Our yard was so much fun and they wrecked it all. I'm feeling really sad.

Maybe Zelda will come over with Erkie and we'll jump over Mom's new plants and roll around in the nice dirt.

One Weekend and a Bottle of Motrin

From this:

To this:

It's a miracle.

The City Dump

You know a major cleanup or reorganization always looks really, really, REALLY bad right before it magically looks fabulous? Kind of like a chemistry experiment that looks like pea soup before it turns a crystalline blue? Well, welcome to the Reno City Dump...

Yep, it's our backyard. Doesn't it look great with those tires stacked against the one fence still standing? And how about those gorgeous black trash bags lined up on the patio--classy!
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Here's another look at our patio. Don't you like the way the dump lady stacked the boards neatly on top of the oak logs? Too bad she wasn't strong enough to tidy up those concrete post footings. Hey, they look great with random boards thrown higgily, piggily on top. What is up with all those trash bags, you ask?

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Well, when you have a really big oak stump which has to be removed because part of it is over the concrete that you still have to dig out and the stump grinders come and attack it, the stump volume multiplies by at least ten. It was a lot of mulch. So I bagged it up to use at the Queen Mother's (because she appreciates mulch), but with the cost of gas we will wait till we are going that way for Sunday soccer to drop it off.

Don't you love our priorities? When it's gas versus a clean backyard, the backyard loses. But when soccer is involved...

***********Finally we have the seven wonders of the concrete world again, a pile of rotted 4x4's, and one intact fence panel propped up on the cherry tree. We are a little dense. The panel blew down in yet another of our little winds, knocking over the wheelbarrow in the process. That would have been okay, but the whole mess landed right on my rhododendron. Yet, there is the exact same panel in the exact same place just waiting for another gust so it can smash any intact branches the rhodie still possesses. The pile of chicken wire proved useless at keeping Kharma in our yard instead of the Bichon Frisee yard behind us and the dump lady will probably have to trip over it before she rolls it up again. The large turquoise pick-up-sticks are actually dog agility equipment waiting for a sane backyard to appear. The grass? History.

We have plans for the weekend which unfortunately do not involve margaritas and sunbathing.

Progress

There's still no fence...but I managed to dig around the old concrete where two of the 4x4 posts used to be!

After the oak tree was removed, I had excavated around the old posts in preparation for fence reconstruction. I'd exposed the concrete, used the "jet" setting on the hose and began a little hydraulic mining on two of the posts that needed replacing. It worked remarkably well. Maybe a little too well, because when our 85 mph breezes arrived there wasn't quite enough to hold up the fence. It might have gone down anyway, but I unintentionally helped it along.

Cleanup came next. Thanks heavens for son #2 because those fence sections were heavy. I would have been smooshed if I'd tried to carry them off myself. Once the old fence was removed I could easily see the concrete footings but I kinda wimped out till the weather was a little nicer. Unfortunately the balmiest days were weekdays, but this weekend found me dressed warmly with pick and shovel in hand. I warmed up quickly once I began!

It sounds a little funny, but I love swinging a pick. I like how much easier it is than using a shovel, but I love how precise I can be with it. It's surprising how ya can hit the exact spot you aim at!

The first concrete footing was a tad daunting--much bigger than I had expected. It turned out to be about twenty inches in diameter. Fortunately for me it was shaped like a mushroom and narrowed once I was down about six inches. It took all morning, but I got to the bottom of it before noon and could feel a slight wiggle when I grabbed one of the old posts and applied a little leverage. A wiggle was all I could achieve no matter how hard I pressed. You'd think that all the Christmas/Valentine/Easter chocolate decorating my tummy, thighs, buns, etc. and sending my scale into spasms would have come in handy but no luck. That concrete must weigh well over a hundred pounds.

So...I set my sights on footing number two, which turned out to be smaller and easier. It was kinda tight quarters digging around it even though I dug out two roses what were in the way first. The poor smashed wisteria trunk, which I hope will send out new shoots, was only three inches away from the concrete. The soil was nice and soft due to all the water from my mining operations and so two and a half hours later, I could move it a bit.

Good thing too, because poor Kharma is sick of getting in trouble every time she goes over to visit the Bichon Frisees in back of us. Our neighbor is great about it, but we don't want to press our luck. So chicken wire is strung in the gap to slow her down, but Kharma pretty much laughs at anything less than a five foot fence. I'm motivated to get those two footing removed and new posts and footings installed as quickly as humanly possible just to keep the pup in the yard.

Now I'm just waiting for a big strong man with a pry bar to come my way.