Not a Parenting Post

This blog has already, despite my intentions, become a parenting blog.

So lest anyone think that this is all I think about (I'll admit to my kids taking up a sizeable chunk, nay, a MAJORITY of my brainpower, but there's a thin sliver of myself in residence....somewhere), this is NOT a parenting post.

This is a I-suck-at-wilderness-living post.

I live in the Pacific Northwest forest. I mean, the frigging postcard, that's what I live in. OK so my house is tiny. I walk out of it and I'm in a fucking postcard. It's worth it.

Now, the beauty I can handle. The woodchopping, I can kinda handle (although being SCHOOLED by Bernie yesterday when he decided to help out was a bit rough on the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar mood). The firemaking, hell, I can even handle that. The mosquitos, well, as long as Fran continues to be more attractive to them than I am, I can handle them too.

But whodathunk that geometry would figure so prominently in foresty-like life?

Today we made a framework for our chopped wood to season in. You'd think this would be fairly straightforward, but nah, we're kinda dull that way. And to top it all off, we're on a spend-nothing-in-this-house-cause-we-don't-own-it kind of kick (totally justified IMO), so we decided to construct it out of semistraight tree limbs and kinda-stripped-already metal screws that Fran grabbed from work the last time they abandoned a large shelving system.



So, two people who have no idea what they're doing and have never constructed so much as a smooth stick in their lives + nonconventional building materials + a chordless saw that works for about 10 minutes and then requires 1.5hr charging period = 8 hours of labor, approximately 700 mosquito bites, 12 stripped screws, and one wonky-looking drying frame. Oh hell, it might have a little bit of rustic charm, since none (yeah, not ONE) of the angles came out right so instead of 'wow that looks a little weird' you MIGHT get 'whimsical' in there somewhere, but nah. It just sucks. If it weren't functional Fran would be feeding it to flame as I type, but it looks like it will actually work the way it was intended to (even if it doesn't LOOK the way it is intended to) so there it will stay, offending our eyes, for at least a year.

We are so totally buying a level the next time we're out.