a loooooooooooong post

it's drizzly today, and i'm glad for it. yesterday was gorgeous and warm. i thoroughly enjoyed it, but it lured me into outside projects all day and i have a pile of laundry the size of a vw bug in my hallway. it's housekeeping day. the outside stuff was wonderful, though! i installed this old bed frame around to the north garden to act as a physical barrier between the blackberries and the mints and other herbs. dad bought me the bed when i was 15 or 16 and i loved it and have hauled it around with me on every move for the last ten years...but a pack rat stole all the nuts and bolts from the barn in yoncalla and i have no idea how to even begin to replace them. i've contemplated using the frame in the garden for a long time, but resisted because of feeling guilty about the money dad spent on it. finally i let go of that. the money is spent! i can't get it back or change that he bought it. now it actually gets used, i can enjoy looking at it, and it will help me in my cause of respecting the blackberries and getting them to respect my boundaries. it felt great to dig the holes to set the posts in and lug big pieces of broken concrete from the back yard to set against the legs for extra reinforcement. grampa's shovel again. i also dug a small trench from the hose spigot to the main path of the herb garden, leveled it, lined it with river sand, and installed a brick path from the pile of random bricky rubble out back (i have no idea what was made of bricks before we lived here, but we have a huge supply of them and i love using them around the place). i mixed the "lock-in" sand (the stuff you sweep over the top of the bricks to hold them in place) with compost and groundcover seeds--creeping thyme and violas--in hopes that they will grow up around and between the bricks...that will be so pretty and add stability, if they do.
the whole time i was working outside the dang neighbors were an irritant--nick, the guy from down the street, who counts in my mind as one of the neighbors because he is friends with them and his dad owns the lots behind and next to our place, so he's always over there...nick was burning a pile of debris like FIVE FEET!!! from our back fence. are you kidding me?! the flames licked up into the ceder branches and it looked so dangerous from where i was. i spoke to him over the fence and he assured me he had everything under control, but dang--there's a whole lot back there, why not burn a few YARDS from my fence and cedar tree instead? so the air was full of ashes and smoke all day, which didn't help my cough any. and then the neighbors, of course, had to bust out the ATVs. they ride them in the aforementioned lot. all day. several days a week. even their little kids have kid-sized ones. it drives me nuts for every reason a sane person can imagine. waste of resources. noise and air and ground pollution. dangerous. teaching the future generation to be materialistic and concerned only for your own pleasures. no respect for land or neighbors. etc. over the weekend they blocked our driveway while they loaded up a whole trailer bed of ATVs to drive somewhere and disturb that land, too. god, they drive me nuts...exhale.
and a blue mountain update...we should have an answer from the state soon. in the meantime we have formed a couple of committees. one for long term funding solutions and one for planning the "homeschool group" which will just be blue mountain, at blue mountain, but volunteer staffed by parents. we set the likely tuition rates at the meeting last night. two kids has to be $120 a month. we have to pay the bills, even though we think the foundation will let us use the space and still cover the mortgage. i'm starting to feel like a bloodless turnip. $120 a month, plus tons of time and energy volunteering. i'll get the energy from somewhere and rodney says he'll get the money somewhere, but i feel tired! plus extra gas and lunch money. god, i am hating the meanie district people so much right now. why the hell couldn't they just leave us alone?! why do people feel the need to push their ideology onto other people?! they don't have to do it. they don't have to like it. they don't have to send their kids there. i pray--and ask everyone out there to pray, too--that the state finds in our favor. please, state! it just makes me sick. the dickson's moved here for bms and now they are moving away because it's not going to be here anymore (most likely)...the dad got a job offer and with the school being so very uncertain, there was no good reason to refuse it. my kids play with their kids every day at school and several times a week outside of school. they have sleepovers and playdates and start little businesses together. those friendships teach them so much about social dynamics, forgiveness, understanding, everything! i'm so sad and disappointed at the thought of the girls suffering such a horrible loss.
grateful for:
1) inventors
2) folk arts (i'm re-learning to knit in preparation for my upcoming sock knitting class)
3) friends
4) community
5) friendliness