Have awesome friends.  We have some pretty fantastic friends. We made a few trips with the pick-up ahead of time, but our friends showed up Saturday morning with a fleet of minivans (and one awesome trailer) and we moved a house full of stuff in two runs. By lunchtime, we were taking a break and deciding where bookshelves should be planted. Our friends cleared the forgotten corners of closetrs, put together our massive dining room table, and didn’t complain about lugging our mountains of junk. They were jpyfdul and encouraging, and even offered to come back for more later in the week. Best moving asset: friends looks ours.

Mark your boxes with crayon instead of marker. I love my Sharpies, of course, but crayons work beautifully (and you get to see the interesting texture of the cardboard) and marauding two-year-olds can’t use them on furniture. At least, not as easily as a marker. And if you’re like me, it’s easier to find a broken crayon on the floor than your one functional Sharpie, which you put in a “safe” place.

Best place for free boxes:  the hoppers outside Dollar General.  Other dollar stores run a close second.

“Wait,” you might be thinking, “did I accidentally go to a blog about how to change residences on a budget?”

No, you are still at the blog about my thrilling life.  But we’re moving, hence today’s topic.  The wild experiment of two (and then three) families living in one house is coming to an end, and we will have our own place again.

I’ve not been writing much lately, so now you may be thinking, “That is a wild experiment!  Why didn’t I know about this?”

Honestly, there has been surprisingly little to write.  I’m hoping to have some reflections, which may or may not be worthy of sharing, after I’ve had some time to reflect.  Right now, it’s all about the boxes.  And the Clorox ones are the perfect size for two stacks of trade-size books.  No lie – best discovery, after the box hoppers, of the week.  Since books are literally somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of our non-furniture possessions.

Only downside to these boxes: we snagged some that had dryer sheets or laundry detergent or something in them, and the back of the truck and the house now smell like whatever fake perfumey stuff some people use on their clothes.  It is not a smell I would want to spend the day with.  But hey, the boxes were free.

A true confession: we were given two spaghetti squash by a friend from church months ago.  I dutifully cooked one right away, very simply, and I’m sorry to say, most of it ended up in the trash.  The other squash has been waiting very patiently in the onion-and-garlic bowl ever since, tossing me sad, neglected looks almost daily. 
But then…I found this recipe:
http://www.skinnytaste.com/2013/01/baked-spaghetti-squash-and-cheese.html
Now I will admit, I did not make it with low-fat anything, but otherwise followed the recipe with my more calorific ingredients.  It was wonderful!  Goodbye unused squash guilt.  So in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation, try this.  Or go buy a spaghetti squash and try it.  I never thought I’d hear myself say that, but there it is.  It was that good.

So I’ve been doing most of my own baking for a few months now (hard to justify the expense of inferior store-bread, when I’m just at home all day doing, well, you know…at-home things).  And as I was clearing up lunch yesterday, including Lucy’s half-eaten sandwich, it occurred to me that I was somewhat offended that she would blithely toss out a whole slice of the bread I had kneaded by hand the day before.  How dare she be so wasteful of my hard work!
Which got me thinking, of course, about how much food we throw away in our family, and in this country in general, and how little it concerns us.  And how much the great distance (both physical and psychological – do you think about the provenance of that beef?) between us and the source and manufacture of our food has to do with this lack of interest in the end that meets so much of our food.  (Today’s Latin lesson – manufacture = “made by hand”- how often is that true of anything anymore?)
What real connection do I have to that fast food hamburger, or even to the canned soup I merely heat up for dinner?  I rarely think twice about clearing those leftovers from the fridge to the trash can.  But it seems that the more involved I am in where my food comes from, the closer I am to the “ground” of the process, the more meaningful eating, really being nourished by my food is.  And the more I care how it is used.  Or not, as the case may be.
Another argument for slow food and the simple life, I guess.  Add it to the pile.  Maybe we’ll actually get close to those ideals some day!
And, all moralizing aside, at least I’m starting to make some really good bread.

We have had a lot going on, so I thought it was past time for an update. We moved,finally, just before New Year’s. So we’re in an apartment in Baton Rouge and friends of ours are renting the house in Marrero. Not as good as sellng, but much better than living in two different cities. We have not gotten a washing machine yet, though, so we’re still imposing on Craig’s parent’s hospitality for that. The girls are starting ballet. Lucy’s first class was lastnightand Samantha starts later this morning. Lucy really enjoyed it and did very well, I thought. We’ll see how Samantha does. She im not as eager to follow directions as Lucy is. 🙂
Clare has been busy. She signed her first word at dinner yesterday, “more”. She wants to eat everything. She is also making a lot of progress standing on her own – and she likes to throw her head back and wave her arms around and roar, “Look at me!” And she wants to help put her clothes on, so she spends half the day trying toput different things on her head – socks, hats, hair ties, blankets, you get the idea. And she’awake now, so I guess I’m done.

For those of you we haven’t talked to in a while, this is our plan for the next several years.  Why would we want to do this, you might wonder?  Let’s just say we’re tired of spending $400 to fix our AC, and $300 for plumbing, and lining banker’s pockets with our mortgage interest, and wasting energy, water, building materials…it’s a long list.  But go check it out:

http://www.earthbagbuilding.com/

The hope is, once we sell this house, to get some land probably in Livingston Parish (between N.O. and Baton Rouse) and get to building.  If you know anyone looking to move to Marrero, let us know!

I hate this time of year.  The termites are swarming, and a few always manage to make it into the house, which is gross in itself, but sends the girls into a panic.  We’ll see if we sleep tonight.

Let’s see how far I get with this – we’ve been too busy living to spend time writing about living lately!  So here’s what I’ve got saved up…

According to my camera, this is from last June.  But I think the date is wrong, and it was actually October.  Either way, it’s been a while since I went through the pics on the camera!

Here is the little altar I put together for the Day of the Dead.  Mom’s only in the picture because it was the best/most easily accessible one I had of Dad.  The had and cookbook are my grandmothers (Eva Krivanek), gum drops were one of my other grandmother’s favorite treats (Margaret Courtney).  The box and frog puzzle my dad made, and the peanuts were one of his favorite snacks.  The rosary was also Grandma Krivanek’s, and the little pictures on the right are of me with my grandmothers.  That was all I could dig up at the last minute when I did this, but I’ll be a little more prepared this year (if the things aren’t still in storage!  More on that in a later post…)

This was in November.  One of them was confused about the weather forecast.  If I remember right, it was Samantha.

They take good care of each other…

…and Pooh Bear.

The nativity set the girls played with.  They’re taking a nap while they wait for baby Jesus.

The meltdowns have begun, so I’ll have to finish this later.

…of various sorts has been ours lately.  I’ll have to come back to the posts on the road trip, but here’s what’s going on more recently.

Lucy has finally given in and decided that she is, in fact, old enough to poop on the potty.  We are jubilant.  And it’s consistent, it’s been only one diaper since we got back from Fargo.  We even tried sleeping without diapers for a couple of nights (at her request), but that went less well.  Apparently if she sleeps in a diaper, she waits until she gets up to pee, and if she doesn’t, well, she doesn’t.  But maybe soon.

Craig is now putting both girls to sleep every night, which means I have unimaginable amounts of time to my self for the moment.  I nurse Samantha, then he takes her while I read to Lucy, then Lucy joins them in bed and everyone is happy and sleepy, at least for a couple of hours.  Samantha has been making it to 3 or 3:30 often, which is great, and Lucy usually stays in her bed until Craig’s shower wakes her up in the morning.  For comparison, a couple of weeks ago I was still nursing Samantha to sleep every night, she stayed in our bed all night, and woke up several times at least.  Craig had been putting Lucy to bed most of the time, but whether she stayed there was pretty hit-or-miss.  So this is going really well (knock on wood!) so far.

Samantha’s vocabulary is growing fast, and she is saying some really cute things that I think should be recorded.  Here is the list that comes to mind (spelled as phonetically as I can manage):

Lucy = see-see

Theresa = see-sa

cookie = key-key

cracker = ca-ca

when she hears a train whistle = tain tack (train track)

Mikey (the dog) = bike-y

Mr. Bob, who is supposed to be “B-Bob” = Bob-B (which the kids on the corner used to call him, also)

I’ll have to add to the list as I remember more of them, but these are some of the best.

Our real excitement today was that Craig bumped the spicket in the front yard with the lawn mower and we now have a gigantic leak.  He used some over-the-counter remedy to slow it down, but we’re still having to turn off the water at the street while we’re not frantically trying to get all wet things done at once.  The leak is between the main line and the house, and there’s nowhere to turn it off and still have water in the house.  So we’re getting a taste of Little House on the Prairie.  Or something.  I guess this will give us an idea of just how primitive we can stand should we ever get around to moving to a farm.

On the farm note, I am looking into chickens.  A movable pen and coop, and just a couple of layers to provide bug control and fresh eggs.  Chickens are cheap, coops are not.  If anyone has a favorite chicken tractor design, I’d love to see it.  Or advice on breeds.  The catalogs are in the mail, and this is all very exciting.

Also in garden news, we had our most exciting crop from the yard today: one large and one small cantaloupe.  The small one had split a little, so we cut it, and it’s gone, mostly eaten by Samantha.  The flavor isn’t spectacular, but I was impressed that the little, almost dead, three-for-a-dollar plants I picked up to fill in the spaces where my own seedlings had succumbed to slugs produced such bounty.  And there’s one rock hard, very green little melon left out there.  And all the things I thought were dead in the garden have sprung new life since it’s rained every day for nearly a week, so maybe it was not all a bust after all.  (The only thing we’ve had enough of to use all summer was basil – and more of that than I can stand to use!)

So there’s the update.  If you know a good plumber in our area, let me know, I’ll be making lots of those calls on Monday.