Guts

Yeah yeah yeah I could say it a little less in your face.  And if I did, it would be like a cat rubbing against my leg, "yes I agree with that nevermind what my life choices are pet me".   A 2X4 is what is called for.

I remember when we moved out here.  I was pregnant and we lived in a trailer that was like 7' by 37' and built in 1953 when insulation was, well, not.  We got the porch built when I actually couldn't crawl into the trailer anymore from the ground because my belly was too big.  The heat was a kerosene heater.  The hot water heater held 5 gallons.  The fridge had no freezer -- you know one of those with the little box in it.  On and on.

And people, mostly men, would come up and say, "I always wanted to do that."  No you didn't.  No. You. Didn't.  What you do is what you want to do.  You like the idea of living out here but you don't have the guts.  You.do.not.have.the.guts.  And if you notice, I didn't ever say I wanted to do whatever the hell it is you are doing.  Unless you are a large animal vet and then I'd like to be your assistant for about a year.  I'd also like to learn how to neuter cats in a boot.

Anyways, it was also in that itty bitty trailer that I started having these horrid dreams, mostly involving being chased and mostly ending with explosions, and I finally figured out:  I need to quit my job.  So guess what I did?  I listened to what I knew and quit my freaking job.  Jumped out into the universe.

Jumped into the power of being the stay at home mom.  And as a stay at home mom I learned the power of living without external validation.  I'm telling you, live for awhile outside of that, with the garden and your babies and supper to validate you or not and you learn a thing or two.  And time with your kids is more important than a new gadget or trip or otherwise being able to buy your way into or out of something or the other.

I remember how scared I was when I made myself drive up to the next barn to see about a job.  Because even when you know you need a change, sometimes you'd rather just live in the known misery.  All day.  Anxious.  I'd worked extra diligently to be done at a reasonable hour (thankfully it was not blanket season or I couldn't have done it).  Ten miles or so on the way home, turn left turn left turn left, not knowing the set up, what I'd find, who I'd talk to, nothing.  But I left with "this is what we pay and start on Saturday."  And from that have grown incredible opportunities for me and for others.

Jumped.  Guts.  Because I'd learned at some point to listen to the universe and myself in that universe and it says the more important things out loud and the less important things it lets you bumble through.  It is not unlike learning to listen to your body and knowing if it is hurting in a good, healing way or in a bad, damaging way.

I know what living in that cabin entails.  It isn't a hotel.  You don't get a key.  The wood isn't already chopped.  Or dry.  Right now it is warm in this house we built even as the temperature outside drops to the teens -- because I'm sitting beside the cook stove feeding it; because we went and got a new thimble and some new stove pipe and installed the new to us parlor stove finally; because last month we hauled up wood with the horse; because a fellow householder split a whole bunch and another carried it in; because my grandmother bought this stove; because the walls we built have six inches of insulation, because of things I can't even name, connections, fertilities, fecundities.  Community ties that I can't even name.

The soup supper is at the end of the month.  You won't even know about that until you've been here a good while unless you are brave enough to just follow the signs from the road when you drive by the day it happens

I could be less.  But I'm not.