The House

This photo is of Bobbitt masquerading as Buddha Kitty. One of us needed to be Buddha and it wasn't going to be me.


But I suppose I need to back up a bit. We built our own house. We didn't contract it ourselves, we BUILT it ourselves. That is a big thing.

But there are consequences to every choice and one of the consequences to building yourself is slowness. So we've lived in it for years but "finished" it isn't. We worked so hard to get in it that we were sick of working on it and simply quit for a long time. Before we were in it, we'd been building for a decade on and off.

But this weekend had called us to work on the long side of the house, the side with the giant (although unfinished) deck. That side of the house is the "daylight" side, so the main level of the house is a good 15 feet off the ground, and the ground sloped away so the far edge of the deck is higher still.

Did I mention that I don't like heights? I think phobias are recreation for people who have time for them and I don't but I really don't like heights. I just control it. With effort.

So I needed my Buddha cat. And maybe a Mike's Hard Lime. And the beautiful almost full moon for milking and illuminating our walk to slop the hogs.

Anyway, one of the reasons I belabored the slowness of building for one's self was because sometimes things you'd think would be done a long time ago just ain't been done yet. Which was what we were doing today. Washing down the side of the house in preparation for treating and sealing it and the deck in preparation for finishing it out.

But while there are disadvantages to slowness, there are also advantages. When we first put that wall of the house us, and even later when we put the deck up, if copper napthanate was available for wood preservation purposes, we weren't aware of it. Now we are.

It is quite a thing though to have envisioned a house and then have it rise up through effort and years as though it is part of the forest itself. No matter how slowly.