Tag: eco house

A little more to life

rebekahdwyer

It’s been a while. A while since we had any news, and since I wrote here. The exciting thing has been that I’ve been writing elsewhere. From that point of view it’s been an exciting few weeks, in amongst the early winter vomiting bugs that so often stalk school playgrounds at this time of year. We were not spared. On the plus side, I was not the parent carrying the child who was carrying a sick bag out of school this week. Neither was Ben; we had had our turn. That kid was not going to get it all in the bag.

A few weeks ago I was feeling like my horizons had narrowed. I was seeing a lot of the same four walls. I really enjoy writing, messing around with words on a page. But you need a lot of self motivation to do that by yourself and with only four walls I was lacking motivation and inspiration. Then I had an idea.

I am a big fan of dungarees. Dungarees are what I feel best in if pyjamas aren’t an option. I have enough pride to recognise that there are a lot of situations in which pyjamas are not an option. Then I discovered Lucy and Yak. And now I just wear dungarees. As well as the dungarees, the ethos of this company really resonates with me. They set up the best way they could, with the view that they wanted to make choices that were for good rather than profit, although they still have to make a profit. They did the best they could and now they are making it better, bit by bit. This fits with how I feel about life. A little better, bit by bit. Not perfect, knowing that sometimes there are better choices but trying to move towards them even if I’m not quite there right now.

My idea was that I could write their blog: find out about the fabrics they use, issues in the fashion industry, look for feel good news, maybe some short stories. Broaden my horizons, find out about stuff I might not research otherwise. And they said yes! So if you check out their blog, that’s me! 🙃

We are still waiting on the land. Waiting for the trustees to agree to a survey and valuation which will provide an independent view on whether our plans would trigger the overage clause (and if so a big bill – hopefully it will tell us how big..). Then we hope we will know if this plan can move forward. Can’t help wondering if they are playing a game with us.

In the meantime, there’s more to life.

If she did it again, she wouldn’t

rebekahdwyer

Ben likes to hang out at the land, if he gets the opportunity. We don’t own it yet. It would be nice if we were close. Maybe we are. Just waiting on the trustees. Maybe they meet twice a year. That would make sense.

In the meantime Ben has been making friends with the neighbours. They bought their bit of land at the same time our vendor bought ours. They built a house on it. She said if they did it again.. they wouldn’t do it again. Too stressful, too hard.

So I was asked the question again. Do I really want to do this? I guess there are challenges she hadn’t anticipated, difficulties she hadn’t thought of.

In the eyes of the optimist, we are realists. In the eyes of the realists we are pessimists. I’m sure we haven’t thought of everything that will be a problem, of all the challenges that will come our way. But we expect challenges and problems. It’s taken most of a year not to buy the land. And that’s just the beginning.

Yes, I still want to do this. I just hope we get the chance.

Transition

rebekahdwyer

Birch is wondering whether it would be fun to walk by himself. The big children walked quietly into their new classes for a taster morning at their new school, and we walked round a rather dingy three bed semi for rent, a bit like our old one but not so nice. We are in transition. We are always in transition, just sometimes it’s more obvious than others. This time last year we were making the change from a family of four plus cat to a family of five. The cat is currently on holiday but we hope he’ll come back and be our “plus cat” again. We miss him.

Maybe that’s the trickiest thing about times of transition. You don’t quite know what you’ll miss when the change comes, you also know you’ll never get there, which is to say that you never get to a place of no change, at least not this side of the Big Box.

It did feel like a lot was changing today. Myrtle was pleased to be in purple rather than green. She still seems so small but she set her chin purposefully and in she went. What a fantastic thing, to watch your children face a challenge and have what they need to take it on and come out the other side, smiling. They both had a good morning at their new school. Myrtle found a girl who shares her birthday so obviously they will be friends. I think it was harder for Red; he’s going into year five where the friendships are firmer and the new children will always feel new. He is one of three new starters in his class which may help, and the teachers didn’t put the new kids together which is a good sign. They felt welcome, and Red’s class had a discussion about a book we have at home (The Giving Tree) so he was well prepared.

I am so relieved and very thankful. They are going to be OK. It’ll get harder, but won’t ever seem quite so scary again. And they turned out to be resilient and courageous. It wasn’t too much. It won’t be for me either.

Still waiting on the land.

Monotony and Contentment

rebekahdwyer

Someone once said (to me) that they crave monotony and so they would hate to do what we are doing. This has played on my mind a bit, and led me on to thinking about contentment.

On the spectrum of monotony vs novelty (I spent some time wondering what the opposite of monotony was. This is my best guess so far.) I reckon I fall on the side of novelty, but not near the extreme end. Change can be good, it can be fun to try new things. But if life is in a comfortable place it can be a change for the worse. Hard to know until the change happens. I would say, I like my novelty in bite sizes portions. When we discovered we were having Birch we both thought of all the changes this would bring, including moving house. It was much more manageable in terms of brain power to decide to manage one change at a time. Turns out we were right about all the changes that would follow, but one at a time is enough.

It is probably a good thing that Ben loves novelty and change. When I told him about the monotony conversation he was pretty much aghast. Crave stability, certainty, consistency, but not monotony! Another word for boring. Music without tune or harmony. Not really music at all.

I think what change brings, and what not changing protects against, is not knowing how you’re going to get through the day. One of the biggest challenges when I had Red as a new baby was not knowing when he would sleep (not really ever), when it would be possible to both boil a kettle and drink a cup of tea. There was nothing predictable in our day so it was really hard to pace myself, navigate a route from beginning to end. Before a big change, it’s a bit the same, you don’t know the shape of your day so it’s hard to envisage getting safely through it. However, since having Red we have moved house four times so far. What you learn is that there is no escaping monotony. There’s no running away from it. Whatever place you’re in, there will be the same jobs to do, the same routine. It takes a few weeks of heavy sat nav use to find your way around and then the roads are familiar, the coffee tastes the same.

There is importance in noticing these things. If we were doing this to escape monotony we will fail to escape. If we think this path in and of itself leads to contentment we will find we are wrong. This is excellent news. Contentment is a decision which can be taken at any point. We don’t need to finish in order to get there. If we wait until then, it will elude us. If we can achieve it now, it will travel the road with us.

For contentment to travel at our side we need to accept the monotonous and provide the harmony for ourselves. This is something Ben is really great at. It is something to strive for and to enjoy as a choice.