Chestnuts and Firewood

Last week several people at work started getting a cold.  Dave was out sick Thursday and Friday.  That meant I got to (had to?) take his dad "to town" for his doctor appointment and a meeting at the drinking water office on Friday.  It was a long day but we did get a lot done while in Santa Rosa.  My favorite things were the restaurant supply store (ever so conveniently located next door to the roofing supply company where we had to buy some stuff), eating out for lunch, and getting an ice cream before driving the two hours back home.  I was hopeful that Dave would be all better by the time I got home, but he wasn't.  So he stayed home in bed all day Saturday, too, while Eddie, John, and I attended the 32nd Annual Zeni Ranch Chestnut Festival.  

I haven't been since before Eddie was born.  This year's was more fun than I remembered--lots of music, tons of food, and lots of people to chat with.  Eddie had a grand time running around with other kiddos.  John and I spent about 30 minutes picking chestnuts way up on the hill where other folks hadn't gone yet.  Next year I need to bring sturdier gloves--the sharp spines came through my leather gloves and poked my fingers too much.

Eddie and Papa heading up into the chestnut orchard.

Me and some chestnuts.  They grow in clusters of about 4 super spiky shells, with about 2-4 nuts in each shell. You can see the yellowish spiky balls all over the ground below me.

Me, my bucket o' nuts, and John's shadow.

John purchased about 3 pounds of nuts for us to take home.  We'll eat some soon and then pop the rest into the freezer for later.  I'm hoping to make some stuffing with them for the holidays.

The open fire on which to roast chestnuts.

Fire roasted chestnuts.

Before we left, John took Eddie and I up a hill to see the small log cabin he and his father built back in the 1960s to use for deer hunting. Every season they'd rent it and spend a few weeks hunting in these mountains.  It still has the old blue and brown painted double hung windows that were taken from the Surf Motel renovation.  The Coast House had the same windows up until a few years ago.

The deer hunting cabin.

John walking down the hill from the cabin back to the ranch festivities.

Eddie was completely exhausted by the time we left.  He fell asleep as soon as John started driving back home.  He woke up when we stopped to collect some sugar pine cones on the road--where we happened to have a nice view of the historic Gianoli Ranch Vineyard.  I pointed it out to Eddie and told him that it's where his great grandmother Ida was born.

You can see the Gianoli vineyard across the valley.

Yesterday we braved the chilly wind on the ridge and Dave's lingering cold to cut firewood for this winter.  Along with a great many other things, this task has been on our list for quite some time.  John pulled two felled madrone trees out of the woods for us to cut up. This is a very dense wood so packs a lot of fuel per volume.  But dense also means it's harder to chop up with the ax.  

Last year for Christmas Grammy and Papa gave Eddie his own pair of ear muffs for working around chainsaws and riding on heavy equipment.  He was excited to use them finally!

Three Bowers, making firewood for their women.

Dave and John cut up the first, larger tree and I got to use the chainsaw to cut up the second one. I did some chopping, too, but dang was it hard!

Dave let him try chopping some of the rounds...he's a little small for that still.

Eddie was a very good helper when it came time to move all the wood.

This picture cracks me up because my hair is positioned to look like Eddie has a really ugly haircut.  Trailer trash boy ponytail anyone?

GOOD HEAVENS HE'S SO CUTE!

We stacked up about half of a cord of wood in the breezeway-turned-future-pottery-studio at the Coast House.  Hopefully it'll hold us for a while.  Of course, we haven't had use of the living room since we moved in because of all the construction and resulting shuffling of stuff in the house.  But last week we had carpet installed in two north bedrooms downstairs so we moved Eddie's bunk bed down into it's proper place in one of those rooms.  And that allowed us to uncover the couches in front of the fire.  So of course we had a nice fire last night.

The living room up until Sunday evening.  It was unlivable so maybe we should have referred to it differently.  You can barely see the stone fireplace at the back left.  I'm excited that we unearthed it and the couches so we can enjoy toasty fires this winter!

Gualalans at Last

Don't worry, blog reader(s)!  I'm still there.  Except now I'm here--in GUALALA!  We made the move on Sunday. Of course, we'll still visit this coming weekend for a party and then at the end of the month for a wedding. But the only items remaining in the house are mattresses on the floor, patio furniture, and some workshop stuff that Dave needs for some final projects.  The tenants will get the keys August 1.

Our next door neighbors, a lovely family with two kids who Eddie has befriended over the last few years, will be moving into our house.  We trust them, like them, and are thrilled that they will live in our beloved house. I feel a tinsy bit guilty that we're "stealing" the tenants from the woman who owns the house they are currently in...but only a tinsy bit. Our house will be a better fit for them--we have an extra living room and nicer amenities.  They agreed to keep our chickens, which is a HUGE relief since we don't yet have a raptor/coon-proof pen for chickens up here on the coast yet. The neighbor kids know how to take care of the birds so I doubt it'll be an issue. Plus it's nice for the hens to not have to move and be penned up all the time. As it is, they're used to roaming the neighborhood.

The last two weeks in Davis were soooooooooooo hot. It was 100+ for about 10 straight days. Thank goodness for air conditioning!  I was not sad that I couldn't cook toward the end of our move.

My mom spent a few days with us over the last few weeks in Davis. Good thing she was there to enjoy the AC and hangout with us--if relaxing was on her agenda she must've been sorely disappointed because her grandsons don't take "no" for an answer!

Eddie and I spent a lot of time in the city pools in the afternoons (and twice at my aunt/uncle's house), eating fast food for dinner every night while watching cartoons on my laptop. I can't believe I had resorted to us eating Taco Bell, McDonald's (breakfast only, I can't stomach dinner foods), Panda Express, Jack in the Box, and pizza delivery.  I felt like I'd joined the Davis counter culture, eating fast food every day. BLEH. The only way I could stand it was by eating a giant salad every day at school. We'd do cereal and eggs each morning.

Swimming at Manor Pool with Dadda on July 4.

Swimming with Mama on July 5 at Uncle Bill and Aunt Bev's house.

So, we've been in Gualala this whole week and I've jumped head first into my usual home cooking and food preservation; after all, it's summer. And summer means fruit is ready to be picked and processed and the garden is just starting to yield meal-worthy produce. Today I'm making 10 batches of plum jam and will freeze apricot halves for pies and fruit leather later on.

Eddie's been going to daycare everyday up in Point Arena while I've been unpacking, organizing, dealing with moving stuff (changing addresses, new banking, etc.), exercising, and setting up my workspace at the water company office. I'll begin working as an administrative assistant there two days a week starting next Monday.  Can you believe that I now spend 80 minutes a DAY driving to/from Point Arena for Eddie's childcare?  Quite different from our 30 minutes of biking a day in Davis.  So now I have to make a point of exercising rather than having it folded into my commute, further shortening my daily availability to get dissertation work done. But since we JUST got here and are still figuring out our daily routine and summer fruit ripening waits for no one, I'm foregoing the major school work in favor of getting some jam made while Eddie's at daycare.

I'll try to get back on here soon with a slew up happenings from the last couple of months. We've been busy!

Retroactive Post: Spring Break on the Coast

Whoa, I realized I never posted about our 10 days in Gualala back at the end of March.

Since we move there in about 3 weeks and I finally have a moment to spare, I'll post about it now.

I decided that it'd be good for Eddie to be up on the coast with Dave again, to give Eddie an idea of what it'll be like once we live there permanently. He hadn't attended the "big day care" there since the previous summer and we'd never slept downstairs at the Coast House before. So I figured out when I'd be done with my winter quarter TA duties and finalized all the spring quarter things (updating the syllabus, posting stuff to the class website, etc.) and found 9 days when we could be there.

Next, of course, I made a long "to do" list for myself and for Dave to accomplish that week.  I quickly realized that we needed my dad up there with us to do some of the work so I begged asked him to come with us. He relented agreed so Eddie and I picked him up in Livermore before heading north. Dave had been driving the van every week so he could take loads of stuff to the new house. That left me with the Saturn--i.e., the tiniest car ever. So we swapped cars with my mom and packed  her station wagon TO THE BRIM.

We had boxes of stuff to move into the house, a Costco run, a Lowe's run (including fragile seedlings), seedlings from my dad's greenhouse, luggage, one dog, two adults, and one child. 

We arrived on Saturday and the guys started working/planning immediately. The week FLEW by, with only a few things on my "to do" list finished. (At least they were some of the bigger things!)  I'd planned on having a day or two to work on my school stuff but that...totally didn't happen.

Saturday afternoon there was a burn practice going on at the airport. Papa John let the volunteer FD burn the fields on the south and north ends of the runway. It was cool to see them using the fuel-drip fire starters.

The guys removed an old intercom box downstairs and Eddie was fascinated that he could see into the office closet.

The view as we left the garden. You'll recall my horror at the view upon returning two months later.

Most of my time was spent with my dad, gardening. So...basically the best combination ever.  We tilled, double-dug, amended with composted horse manure, tilled again, irrigated, and planted to our heart's contents.

My dad, standing in the garden. 

He kept remarking shouting to me about how DIFFERENT it is to garden up on the coastal ridge. Maybe he was talking about the lack of rocks in the soil??????  =)

A typical weeknight while I prepared dinner.

Papa John asked me to get him a microscope at the UCD Bargain Barn before I came up. I've always wanted one so he said we could keep it at the Coast House for me and Eddie to use. Woooooo!  My dads spent a night looking at fibers, water, saliva, etc.

One night we looked outside after it rained and saw a bright rainbow reflecting in the Gualala River. If that wasn't spectacular enough, a double rainbow developed.

If the local paper printed in color I would have sent this to them. It was so lovely.

The best part of the whole week was the Eddie had TWO grandfathers in the house AT THE SAME TIME (at least at night when Papa John was over for dinner).

That is a one content little kid.

The following Friday Edward arrived in town via bike. Yes, person-powered BIKE. He biked from SF to Healdsburg on Thursday, spent the night at a place he found on WarmShowers.org and spent Friday navigating the desolate Fish Rock Road. He was tired and starving when he arrived (duh) so we immediately went to a logging site and roasted sausages, hot dogs, and marshmallows for dinner over a fire Papa John made for us.

We had dinner on the fire twice that week, actually; Monday and again when Uncle Edward arrived.  My dad enjoyed it so much he was the one who requested the second time!

I have to admit, I love cooking over the fire.

My dad had NEVER EVER EVER made s'mores before. He'd roasted marshmallows but never combined them with chocolate and graham crackers. Isn't that CRAZY?

Friday when Edward arrived in town.

Late that night, my mom and Jennifer drove into town and spent the Easter weekend with us. Saturday we made a delicious GF breakfast and then my mom took Edward, Jennifer, Eddie, and me to the Sea Ranch to walk on the trail. It was a lovely, breezy day.  One of the photos I snapped that day will be used for our "we've moved" announcement cards.

Auntie Jennifer and Uncle Edward at the Sea Ranch.

Eddie and Uncle at the Sea Ranch.

Eddie has learned that my mom is not a "rough play" person so he always finds a comfy spot in the house and asks her to read to him for a long time. The house was quiet after our Sea Ranch trail walk and I found them snuggled up in the upstairs. I crept in without him noticing and took a picture.

It was a pretty fantastic and productive, yet exhausting, week. As is usually the case, we ended up staying one extra night/day so that Dave and my dad could finish up some work on the house that Dave wasn't 100% sure he could do on his own (at least without a zillion phone calls to my dad).

Moving Progress

Dave just took off with Clifford the Big Red Truck, hauling off our living room and a 8 totes of our kitchen stuff (which is to say only maybe 20%).  

My dad loaned us his pickup and cargo trailer so moving should go much faster now.  The only thing we're missing is a garage in which to move all the workshop stuff and time.  Sigh.

This was the state of the living room this afternoon. The entropy of this house was reaching my maximum threshold and I was about to explode in frustration.  So, I ate some Mint Milano cookies, took a deep breath, and went back to work loading the trailer.

And this is what we're left with now.

It's so empty!  These pictures were taken many minutes apart...yet you'll notice that Taters is still in position.

Next weekend we'll load up the garden shed contents, some of the kitchen/housewares stuff from the garage, and maybe Eddie's furniture (since really, that's all that remains of furniture in the house). Slowly, slowly we make progress.

I am terrified that I'll have a stroke when I walk into the Coast House when we next visit.  Dave is in charge of unloading the stuff he hauls up there...and that of course means he just sort of dumps it wherever.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!  I can't stand that this Davis house is a nightmare of disorganization, but to think what the Coast House must look like right now seriously makes me go into a minor tachycardia rhythm.

AND Dave reports that he can hardly see the veggies we planted among the smothering weeds.  Even without that damn dissertation, there's so, so much work to be done.  Just thinking about all this makes me want to curl up and take a nap to escape reality...which is what I did on Sunday afternoon after taking Eddie on a walk in the 90F weather and realizing that I was way, way too exhausted to do any packing.

Eddie and I were playing with his dollies and then I fell asleep. Taters' rump was an okay pillow but my jaw hurt when I woke up in a puddle of drool in his fur. Ew.

I repositioned myself to use the dollie as a pillow, which was much more comfortable.  THIS is why I have a dog--he's the best snuggler ever. He could stay snuggled up with me (or any person, really) for hours and hours.

Wish us luck next weekend!  Dave takes his water exam on Saturday afternoon and then we'll busy ourselves packing the truck and/or tiling the bathroom and/or prepping the living room window for replacement.  Ready, set, go.

Oh, Davis

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I will (or will not?) miss living in Davis.

Things I anticipate missing:

1. Our relatively kid-safe cul-de-sac where Eddie can play without much worry of being hit by a car
2. The neighbor kids and the countless hours Eddie spends playing with them outside
3. The variety of grocery stores within walking/biking distance (the International market, stocked with Indian items; the Asian market; the food co-op; Trader Joe's with it's healthy convenience food; regular run-of-the-mill stores)
4. Biking commuting to daycare and work/school
5. Limitless internet bandwidth (at least seemingly limitless)
6. Long growing season and fertile soil
7. Antenna TV
8. The tank top wearing weather
9. Sidewalks
10. (Relatively) short drive to my folks' house
11. Seeing my friends and coworkers every day
12. Not having to set aside time to exercise
13. The park next door
14. Talking about soils, chemistry, ag, and stats every day
15. Cassie and Miss Amanda
16. Lack of immediate judgement from random people who learn that my last name is Bower
17. Being the only adult in the house (there's soooooooooo much to do and I could really use some help with all the chores and child rearing)
18. Stores open past 8 pm
19. Sushi
20. Going to the movies (which, admittedly, we don't do often but knowing that we can go on a whim will be missed)
21. Relatively plentiful college age baby sitters
22. Unpaved, horizontal land right outside my door
23. Home Depot, Costco, and Target being only 10 minutes away
24. Constant cell phone service
25. Twenty four hour medical care (ain't no urgent care or ER in Gualala)
26. Chatting with random people who pass our house 

Things I anticipate not missing:

1. The 100 F weather in the summer
2. The hot, dry wind
3. The dusty air
4. Flies
5. Having to keep the dogs on leash 
6. Cleaning up dog poop
7. Having to find appropriate places on our property where Eddie can dig in the dirt and make HUGE MESSES of mud and plant debris without making our suburban house look gross and unkempt
8. Lack of trees for tire swings, tree houses, elaborate forts, etc.
9. Buying fruit
10. Single-handedly juggling Eddie, school, the dogs, and the house
11. Gross, disgusting tap water (even after going through a Brita filter)
12. Hauling fruit 3 hours by car to process it (apples, plums, cherries, tomatoes, blackberries, huckleberries, mushrooms)
13. Being the only adult in the house (I want the chores and child rearing to be done my way, darnit!  And I want some privacy!)
14. Being too hot while sleeping (hello cold sea breeze!)
15. Cooking for two--it's so much harder than cooking for a larger group
16. Having to close the curtains so passersby and neighbors can't see in our windows--at the Coast House this will not be a problem since there are no passersby and none/few of the neighbor's windows face our house
17. Limited communication with Dave--Eddie and I sometimes only speak to him once a week via video chat, depending on his work/meeting schedule
18. The nervousness I feel every time Dave is commuting on the curvy roads, which is always at night)
19. High cost of childcare
20. Not seeing Dave every day
21. Having to count off the days until we next see Dadda to Eddie every.single.day

Things that go through my head on a daily basis:

1. Holy crap...are we really moving?
2. Yay!  We're moving!
3. HOW AM I NOT DONE WITH MY DEGREE YET?!
4. OMG we will NEVER be able to move out of this house in time!  We have soooooo much stuff and moving is going soooooooo slowly!
5. I'm so proud of how much progress we've made moving using only the minivan and a small trailer so far!  Two rooms done in only...wait, 6 weeks?  Ug.
6. Are we making a mistake by moving to the boonies?  Will Eddie suffer from the relative isolation? Would it be better for us as a family to force Dave to find a job near Davis so Eddie can grow up here? But then what job would I have to find in order to stay in suburbia, too?  If us parents are happier and more fulfilled, won't that translate into a happier childhood for Eddie?  Or won't it?
7. I can't wait to move to where the air is dust free, where I'll never have to use AC again, and where it rains more than 10 times a year!!!!
8. I don't want to move to a place where there's fog all summer and rain all winter, where it's too cold to wear tank tops or shorts, where I have to drive so much.  
9. I can't believe I agreed to live in that monstrous, outdated, ridiculous Coast House...which I swore I would never, ever do.
10. Eddie's gonna love it!  All the space to explore, dig, build, and camp! 
11. Eddie's gonna hate it!  No neighbors next door to play with, all the driving on the coast roads,  living in a new house.
12. We'll get to see Dave every.single.day. Every single day!  Multiple times a day!

Things I am thankful exist, because they will ease the feeling of isolation:

1. The internet
2. Amazon Prime
3. NPR

********************

Dave and I were engaged during my last semester of college.  I remember sitting in my environmental econ class, waiting for the professor to begin lecturing and I glanced down at my (horrendous) emerald engagement ring on my hand. It was left to Dave by his late grandmother "Tutu" and was such an old lady ring.  I mean it: it even had a hinge to enlarge the band diameter to fit over an arthritic knuckle.  While I love(d) Dave, I didn't like the ring because it wasn't me or mine. It was a hand-me-down and we didn't have the money to replace or restyle it to something that reflected me.  As I contemplated the ring I thought, "What if being married to Dave is boring like this ring and nothing interesting happens for us?"  OH BOY.  Isn't that funny?  How boring my life was back then.  If only I knew what was in store for us. 

The Slowest Way to Move

You know those folks who pay movers to not only move their stuff to a new location, but also to pack their stuff?  I can't imagine the cost associated with something like that, but sometimes I sure wish we were going that route.

But of course we're not.

When you combine a cheap guy like Dave with the daughter of the Frugal Levie family, you always move the same way: by your own sweat, little-by-little, and cheaply.

Heaven help us if we didn't have a trailer and a minivan.  That's right: we're moving a load at a time each weekend.

It might not seem like a lot, but having done this for a few weekends straight we're really making a dent in the house's contents.  (But trust me, most weekends it doesn't seem like we're making any progress at all!)

I'm still dreading the garage though--not only do we have a lot of stuff in there, but we also lack a garage at the Coast House in which to put all of it.  Dave still needs to get a garage door installed on the carport and weather-proof the other openings before we can even think about packing and moving the workshop. Oy.  OY I SAY!

We have only 20 purchased moving boxes (size medium, from Home Depot) plus random boxes from Costco.  The majority of the things are packed into Rubbermaid totes that I pack up each weekend and Dave unloads each week so we can reuse them endlessly.  I'm SURE Dave isn't putting things in quite the right places (if anywhere but on the floor in the upstairs living room...) so I'll be making a trip up there in May sometime to put things away properly.  Otherwise I'll go completely insane walking into a disaster zone of my own belongings come summer when we're permanently there.

Here are some progress pictures:

Office before. Well, sorta before. Once the bathroom renovation started across the hall, this room became a staging area for the cement board and random things.

Office now. The futon belongs to Edward and I'll be taking it to him next week when I'm at his place for Dyani's baby shower.

Master closet before.

Master closet now. Mostly Dave's stuff has been packed. Plus all my shoes--you know, those shoes that I can't give up but don't wear much.

Dining room before. (The hutch and china was the first stuff to be moved.)

Dining room now. We've moved half the patio furniture inside.

Living room before.

Living room now.  All the pictures and knick knacks from the walls have been hauled away.  It's weird, the house seems much smaller having taken down the pictures.  Visually, the walls seem longer/wider when there are pictures to break them up.

Busy Busy Bowers

Oh my goodness, we've been busy.  But happily busy so it's okay.

Things are getting 'real' regarding our move away from Davis.  The only thing I've actually moved to the Coast House so far are some potted plants but the list-making and preparations here in Davis are starting up.  Dave's tasks are starting and completing projects while mine center more around all the paperwork and logistics of moving and renting a house (writing a lease, posting the rent ad, hiring a landscape company to blow leaves/clean gutters/fix irrigation a couple times a month).  It's a good thing I like lists!

I have a whiteboard in my home office that I update every few days with my tasks.  The top is my dissertation chapter list, the bottom left is today's list (yeah right am I getting all that done!), and the bottom right is the two-month-plan list.  

Dave made a sketch of the back wall of the soon-to-be downstairs Coast House kitchen to ask me where I wanted electrical outlets and light switches.  

On the other side of the card he made a loooooooooooong list of all the plumbing/electrical stuff he'd need.  It took him 3.5 hours at Home Depot to get everything. Can  you imagine how long it'd have taken if I were there asking questions or if Eddie were there with us?  OY VEY.

Meanwhile, he made major progress with the hall bathroom here at home.  He replaced the window and we hauled the old tub out of the house on Monday before I left for school.  The new tub is in a box in the living room, currently acting as a play structure for Eddie.

Bye bye sheetrock and tub.

 As busy as we are, there's been plenty of time for fun, too.  On Sunday Eddie and I went to Renee's third birthday party.  It was rainbow theme and Kelly did an AMAZING job making sure every last detail of the party was as rainbowed-out as possible.  The kids got to play in some dyed rice she made, which was a huge hit.  And the kids surprised us by keeping 98% of the rice in the tub.  Yay!

Eddie's in the blue party hat.  There were rainbow wood cut outs to play with, along with little Waldorf people toys, egg cups, wooden eggs, tools, and little mushrooms.  Super fun!

Since I'm not adding anymore stuff to our compost pile, I've started feeding all our kitchen scraps exclusively to the worm bin (before it was about half and half).  Now that the temperatures are increasing and I'm feeding them more, they're going through their shredded paper bedding a lot faster.  Eddie and I spent some time shredding some old office paper on Sunday.

For the last two years, I've told my spring quarter students to give me all their final exam notes (it's open note) if they don't want them and that I'd use them in the worm bin.  And see?  I actually am!   As my dad always says, "paper is cheap but answers are expensive."  I got a lot of eye rolls from the students about making them have hardcopy notes instead of using their computers but I didn't want them to Google all the answers (getting yourself organized with your class notes is a skill they should learn).

Eddie was pretty excited to help with the shredder since this was the first time I ever let him use it.  

I'm done with my chai milk tea break so I'll hop back on the grading wagon.