We're alive... ALIVE!!!

I have so much bringing up to date that needs to happen that it's absolutely ridiculous. If you're one of the few that follows me on facebook you might have some small idea of the chaos that we managed to insert ourselves into, otherwise... ugh.. where to start?!

Late last year, my wife A~ and I decided to put our house on the market when spring rolled around, and see what came of it. Well, what came of it was that we listed it on Feb 1st, and it managed to sell in exactly one month. Then we found ourselves contractually obligated to be out of the house by the end of March. During that time, we managed to find a wonderful house, that met 95% of everything we had identified as wanting in a new long-term home and made an offer. After some negotiations, we had an offer accepted and were scheduled to take ownership at the end of April, which left us in a temporary housing situation in an apartment. We would be able to be out of our temporary apartment and into the new home by the end of June. Because there were a number of small issues with the new house, crack in foundation that had a seasonal leak, outdated kitchen with really really funky countertops, leak in roof and just general outdatedness, we tackled a pretty significant remodel project on the inside of the place which left us pressed for time since I essentially gutted the entire kitchen down to studs and subfloor. We figured as long as I could have the kitchen completed, or close to completed by the time we moved in we would be alright. Well, we almost made it...

We did manage to have the majority of the kitchen framed and drywalled before we moved in and had started the process of building up our IKEA kitchen abinets. Let me take a moment to call BULLSHIT on anyone who says you can assemble an IKEA kitchen in a weekend! It did go together fairly easily, but took a ton of time and a number of calls to their service and support center before the kitchen was even functional, let alone completed. In the mean time, while I spent my nights working on a little project here or a little project there to finish the kitchen off, A~ busted her butt getting the rest of the main living areas functional and actually pretty damn nice looking. We still have a tone of work to do, but so far it still remains a labor of love.

As far as the yard and garden are concerned, I really have little to nothing to report other than it has been in my mind constantly. I plan to spend a lot of this upcoming winter plotting and planning the future iterations of the farm and how I hope to see it go forward. For now though, I have pretty regular discussions with myself as to what it is that I would like to see back there. It's fun to have enough land (2.6 ac) to really get to think about all the fun projects and long term goals that can be potentially accomplished.

Finally, the reason I can say definitively that I am back is because for the first time since March, we again have an internet connection in our home. Yes, you heard that right, the last nearly six months we managed to exist with no in house internet. It honestly wasn't too bad other than a few research problems I had when it came to some commisioned writing, but we managed to get by with phone data and local free wi-fi hotspots. Now though, now we're back on line and I have a TON of stuff going on and I'm excited again to be writing. I know there's still a few of you out there who drop by from time to time, and I still seem to pop up on the search pages so with any luck we can pick up where we left off and keep on growing the possibilities together.

Hope you are all well and have been much blessed since last we chatted.
Namaste.
Paul Gardener.
P~