The Call of the Wild

I was doing so well updating my NaNo word count thingy, but I am pretty sure that sort of thing would have completely driven me batty. So I stopped doing it after about a week. Working my thankless job wasn't really helping with the stress and trying to juggle finances just added to the mess.

I was very much this cat:

My sanity was kind of restored, at least partially, due to a much needed vacation into the middle of nowhere.


Three and my anniversary was the 15th (yay one year!! dance dance dance), and we drove out to my dad's land about one and a half hours away from civilization the weekend before, since I had a long weekend. Thank you, Veterans Day, both for the actual veterans and for the paid day off. But I digress. Sure, we had electricity and running water (in no small part to my dad, who apparently built an entire irrigation system with his bare fucking hands), but the cabin is nowhere near pristine. It's a hunter's cabin, which basically means only absolute necessities. The original owner apparently thought putting up patches of plywood on the walls served as wallpaper. And ladybug carcasses litter the place. There's a little mouse - or possibly mice - that lives there and leaves little tiny treasures around and over everything. My dad has kept it away from his snacks by storing them in the refrigerator, but he refuses to use anything kitchen-wise without washing it first.

"You can probably assume that it's crawled over everything in the cabinets, so just go ahead and scour it before you eat off of it."

It's probably why he keeps his water heater at temperature volcano.

Despite the austere conditions, the husband and I had a great time. Yes, sex was had, as anniversaries pretty much require it, but we cooked, hiked, talked, too. Three repaired my dad's ATV, and he and my dad went hunting on the second day we were there. As in woke up before God does, wore camouflage, and sat in the wilderness with a muzzle loader. *shrug* I wrote a lot and read 1Q84 by Murakami, which I highly recommend, by the way. It was just ... nice. And calming.

We both started thinking about this little bit of property we saw for sale that we had gone to look at before making our way to my dad's land. It's small - only about 1.5 acres - and the house is a little on the fixer-upper side of things. It was built in 1940 and has a cellar, pit barbecue, and a couple of little sheds in the backyard. And get this: the whole shebang is only $59,000. It is out of the way by a lot, but it would be ours. I understand the allure of the city: convenience, action, and what have you. But this? It's just lovely and simple. I had always told Three that I wanted a little farm with goats (about the closest thing I can come to a llama without it being a llama) and chickens, and this would be perfect. I could make my soap, write, raise little animals, and have a cute little farm of my very own. I have wonderful resources (my grandmother, my dad, the interwebs) that I can use and I'm pretty inventive.

It sounds very hippie-ish, I know. I'm okay with it.

I get excited every time I think about it. Nearly every day for the past week, I've looked at craigslist, scanning the ads for goats for sale. I also got some supplies to start an indoor herb garden. My coworkers apparently all think I'm insane, save for a few, who are like, "Dude, can we get some fresh veggies from you??" They just fuel my desire to say, "Screw you, city life. I'm gonna be a FARMER."

Now I just have to make sure that I can get the internet out there. That, right there, is a dealbreaker.