Saturday, November 28, 2009

Woolgathering from the edge of our ship....





So we are a little over three months and Josephine's personality is really starting to blossom. She is so happy! This whole dad thing is amazing. Melissa is going back to work next week and that is really hard for us. Although not having money to buy diapers is even harder so we do what we must. Melissa really wants to be able to stay home and I wish she could but we just don't make enough for that to be possible right now.
I have been dreaming of buying a house and trying to be as self sustainable as possible in the next few years. I mean I read somewhere that children can be told what to do by their parents but modeling is the best way to teach. That sounds pretty solid to me. So I really want to be able to have a little place outside of town with a bunch of land so we can garden and can and have a big studio and and and... Man I was talking to some of my buddies and we sort of got on this kick that we could all buy a house together and live in a little community. My heart filled with hope. I love this idea. I think even if they are not as serious as I am, I am going to build little guest houses on our land just to entice them to live with us. I can picture it now. Baking bread, growing pumpkins, having house shows with our close friends, fires to roast corn. Perhaps this is a little overly idealistic but really, what makes this impossible? Nothing. all we need to do is to do it. No one needs to show us what our lives should look like.
I have thought this for a while. We are stuck in this narrow lane of life structures and I want something different. I think a lot of people do. Everyone I have spoken to about this is in agreement. Living off the grid would be so awesome. I just can't ever seem to figure out how to get to there from here. It takes lots of money. That is the sad truth. You cant leave the system behind unless you engage in the system wherein lies the trap. For now we try to get a little closer to living in balance with our environment. I am going to try really hard to be vegetarian. I have been in this process for a few years now. It was just hard because so much good Mexican food is meat. Now that I know how to make vegetarian tamales I think I will be ok. We are going to raise Josie vegetarian too we have decided. Later on she will make her own choice but for now I think we can feed her good nutritious vegetarian food. Hopefully when we have a garden she will be able to eat local too. I find my self wondering where my food came from lately. Food from half a world away and packed with preservatives and chemicals don't exactly make me feel healthy. I had an apple the other day that seemed like it was sprayed with lysol and dipped in a vat of wax. Disgusting. I miss my mom's vegetable garden. You could eat the snow peas right off the vine. and it was delicious.
I just know that this walmart/television/music video hyper-sexualized/non-culture is not the environment I want to raise my daughter in. I want her to be able to question the practices that are shoved down our throats. I want a Homemade life for her. DIY culture is addictive. The satisfaction you get from making something yourself and being able to use it is just amazing. I mean I have always loved making stuff. In high school my sisters and I always made or altered our clothes. And yeah at first Mom would get pissed but after a while she would help us figure out how to bleach and rip my pants for maximum punkness or sew a Ramones patch onto my hoodie. She is a crafter herself. Mom taught me how to sew when I was pretty young. I remember her always being in her little room sewing till all hours of the night. A little orange light glowing from twilight till midnight. Even now the sound of the sewing machine soothes me to the bone. Mom made a quilt from my old bleached jeans when I grew out of them. She had been collecting my jeans and cutting them into beautifully irregular squares. That quilt is one of my most prized possessions. It is warm and made with love. That is the sort of thing I want to pass down to my daughter. The kind of appreciation that comes with making something with your hands and knowing that it was hewn from a love that can only be forged in the furnace of a family hearth. Thanks Mom for showing me that.