Water in, Water out

First of all, Major flooding here. Really serious flooding.
Abridged version:
Record Snowfalls in the Dakotas resulted in Gavin's Point Dam in Yankton, SD overfull to the point of breaking and they opened the floodgates fully over the course of a month or so.
As a result, unprecedented amounts of water hits the Missouri river and the mighty Mo just cannot take it and overflows in a most hideous way. And this overflow will continue probably until August but no one really knows. Considering we've had torrential storms and rain for the last 2 days, I guess it will be a little worse now.
Impact to the build: Nothing (I feel guilty even writing this). We are spring fed and the only interaction our spring has is when the creek it feeds into eventually dumps into the Mo someplace far from our house.
Our spring continues to chug out it's bone-chilling water at the same rate, (5 gal / minute) and when I say bone-chilling I can't say bone-chilling enough. You simply cannot keep your hand in it for longer than maybe 10 seconds without the bones in your hand aching as it goes numb.
Wonderful though, having a water source like that.  And no flooding.

The septic system is in pending the inspection. My darling husband decided he could save money putting the septic in himself and off he went. And it all went something like this: First, the truck broke down and lost a leaf spring. My Xterra has no hitch. We have flooding (as I think I already mentioned) and everything you can imagine that has anything to do with heavy equipment is rented but we end up getting a uhaul, yes, yes that's right, a uhaul, and haul some beat up looking cat out to our land. Our land is on a hill. One hour or so into the digging and I (who by this time is inside the house, up in what will be my art studio, slapping on a coat of paint), hear a strange sort of muffled "OH MY GOD" coming from outside.
   I immediately rush for the stairs expecting the worst, and what I find is the cat on it's side and dave walking very quickly around in circles, shaking his right leg. Yes, he was ejected. He claims he saw the roof of our house for a brief moment as he was catapulted through the air and came vaulting down directly for the septic channels and he did some sort of tuck and twist to save himself (if you knew Dave you'd know how likely that is to have happened exactly that way)... except that he landed with one knee twisted behind him.

Hospital? don't be foolish. When I skewered my food on a metal plate last year through my shoe and had a river of blood (I kid you not, a river), running from my food, Dave wrapped it in saran wrap, drove me home and cleaned the wound himself, telling me "it's a mere flesh wound". (PS I still have strange sensation in that part of the bottom of my foot and I went onto limp for about 4 months but who's counting).

This all happened by the way about 5 days ago. Yes he's still limping and has alot of pain, which
he is controlling wtih pain meds and rediscovering the amazing healing properties of Jack Daniels.

Dogs don't work.

Dog's don't work take 2.

ONWARD BRAVE SOLDIERS:
I have become a late night lurker.  I seldom go to bed now before 2am. Also, there are some really strange noises out on the land, the wind, who knew that the wind sounds like all sorts of things (sometimes screams even). I lay in bed last night telling Dave all the slasher/horror scenarios that go through my mind when I'm out there.
"Jesus. You're creeping me out. Are you afraid to live there?" he asked me, looking a little worried.
"Yes"
"Really afraid?"
"Yes. I keep on seeing things out in the darkness and I imagine the worst. Horrible stuff. Scary, undead stuff . Figures out in the storms, just standing there, off in the fields, staring....".
"Do you not want to live out there now?" (looking at me worriedly again)
I looked at him and smiled. "I think my paintings will be darker than I thought". (oh, he has no idea)....
"Ah..." He smiled too.
I really do imagine all sorts of horrible things, the howling wind, the lightning storms under those huge skies and it is so so so dark out there probably doesnt help things. I should have never read so many horror books or watched so many creepy movies, I'm paying for it now.

The most AMAZING lightning storm the other night. I have never seen anything like it. 8, 9. 10 flashes of lightning at a time, going horizontally across the sky, loops of lightning bending back up to the sky, and clouds so huge and swirling it really was like a scene out of War of the Worlds and I mean the Tom Cruise version which had those magnificent storm effects.
Dave, Amber, the 4 dogs and I sat out on the front porch and watched the lightning in amazement for over an hour, that and the lightning bugs (and there were literally thousands of them out across the fields, as far as the eye could see). Gorgeous. No one else sees this view, because no one else faces into this valley but us so it's like a private little show of glorious lights.  Just the sound of the frogs, crickets and the yipping of the coyotes across the hill as they set off on their nightly hunt.

It is really freaking hot out. And we're both sort of getting tired of this build. And we haven't even started dry-walling yet. But no flooding so I should be grateful right?
right.

I'll meet you anytime you like.... at our Italian restaurant......

.... ah, Billy Joel and the days of old. I cannot hear that song (which is playing now) without remembering Toronto and the 1970's and singing along to that song with my friends while doing things that were, and still are, mostly illegal. I was coerced though, because I am very easily led.  Thats my story and I'm sticking to it :-) Ah, the days of old......

KEVIN BACON: Just read an interview with Kevin Bacon and the fact he almost didn't get the role in footloose because the studio head didn't think he was f**kable enough. Hilarious. For the record, I didn't like footloose, or Kevin Bacon for that matter in those days, or the dancing, the songs or the whole frolic of it all. The river wild, now that was when I realized I actually liked Kevin Bacon because the applie pie face of his made a really really good evil dude and he seemed to really enjoy being evil. Oh yes and stir of echoes. Loved it too, just thought I'd add that.

The HOUSE: We are putting up cedar trees for hand rails. Yes, oh yes we are. Dave got them from his friend Pete who cut down a bunch and they were exceptionally straight and the perfect diameter for handrails. So they're up. And of course we have no idea what we'll do between the top and bottom rail, that's sort of "to be determined" at this point but that's the kinda stuff that doesn't cause us one spec of concern. Putting in the septic, that concerns us, considering we've never installed one before and have no clue.  Oh yes and affording all this since we are, in fact, building this house as we go along.

5 YEARS: Today is the 5 year anniversary of the day we signed on the dotted land and so began the story of the Iron Dog Ranch. (Named after our deceased dog Max, who's actually buried on our land. Max spent about 5 years not meeting anyone because he would randomly walk over and bite people but if you ask Dave, he will say Max is the best dog he ever had. Max was, and always will be, the Iron Dog, although I also call Dave that as he gets a little greyer and impresses me more and more with the way he's pulled this whole thing off. He really is quite incredible).
      By the way, having never built a house before was huge. Deciding to design it ourselves, that was at times overwhelming. To anyone who ever thinks of designing and building their own house: NOTE to selves: It looks nothing like it did on paper, no matter how hard you try to be accurate. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, I'm just sayin.....
   Dave no longer looks at the designs and I never did, so that just adds an even crazier element to it all. We've changed so much on the fly (Dave says I'm the worst and best client he's ever had).  Fortunately we're both artists, scavengers of things old and unusual, and we did work together professionally at one time (5 years to be specific) so it's not like we aren't experienced in building together. So for the most part we don't fight or even freak out. And we just throw in ideas and if it's cool, we just build it. And just once in awhile, when it dawns on us how crazy building this house has really been, and how not even looking at the plans is really ballsy, well then we freak out a little. Did I mention we are building the entire thing ourselves, board by board, block by block?  The first night of the actual build, we spent 2 hours lining up a line of 10 concrete blocks because we couldn't get it all square, and we looked around at the 2,800 blocks (I would come to learn that a block weights 37 pounds and let me tell you something: the last block is as heavy as the first block) piled up around us on so many pallettes we couldn't count the pallettes there was so many, and I came pretty close to completely freaking out. I looked at Dave, sort of horrified, and he looked at me and smiled and said "Hey, ...it'll be fun...." and there was a silence then, broken by the sound of the birds and the frogs off in the distance on this pleasant Loess Hills night in Iowa and neither of us said anything for a really long time... "we are so screwed" I finally said (it was all I could think of to say because It was all I was thinking over and over again...). and we both laughed the first of what would be a long string of "we're screwed" laughs to come in later months.
    Very shortly the construction crew (consisting of the two of us, as I have kept repeating), will be handing the build over to the artist crew (consisting of the two of us yet again) to really start the fun. Maybe the fighting will start then. (but I don't think so :-) But I don't really know for sure..... We don't even have running water yet. :-) We are so screwed. But happy anniversary to us :-)

Hello New Life

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep

.....Robert Frost

Hello New Life.



This is not the beginning. this is just the beginning of recording it because it is sort of crazy.

Dave and I are building a house. But not just any house, a house we ourselves designed and are building completely on our own. I cannot start at the beginning so the beginning will just get fed into the story as I go.

The house is on 5 acres of land and none of it is finished. Some of it not exactly designed, persay (quote: Dave: Yesterday: "God, I haven't looked at the blueprint in ... well, I don't know how long").

   We both laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.  And yes, it is ridiculous.

Yet I don't think I have ever felt so alive.

Perhaps it's because I quit my IT job after 12 years to pursue the life of .. well, of an artist, and sometime gardener, and businesswoman in my biz, not someone elses.

Or perhaps it's because of the fact that we're growing our own garden, and our own orchard, and our own beehive, our own herbs.

Or maybe it's because we're doing all of this out of her pocket so far (that's the long part of the story, because it certainly didn't start out to be that way, ever ever ever. I would NEVER have agreed to something as insane as that and I would have been terrified.  Oh wait, I am terrified.

Yet... I don't think I have ever felt so alive.

Funny thing, change.

:-) Hello New Life.