Writing

Tiny Bit Awake & Remembering

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Laura

I awaken.  The sun has not yet pushed the darkness to the forest floor.  There is a noise.  I quickly realize is Minnie, whose trachea is collapsing and she is terrified trying to find her airway.  I do the only thing that I can do for her, which is to calm her.  I pet her from her head down her back to her tail, slowly, over and over.  I calmly reassure her.  “You are OK Minnie.  Sweet little Min.  Pretty little Mosie.  Baby Button Face.  Good little Minner.  It is OK good girl.”   I lay next to her, diagonally across the bed in the loft of Tiny House Ontario with my head in the window.  When it is just the dogs and I here, I very often sleep like this, so I can watch the forest shadows dance through the night.  Minnie finally starts to breath normally and when she does she turns to look right at my eyes.  She does this for a long while, big saucer eyes with her giant ears laying back flat on her head still, she looks relieved.  I am sure she is thanking me for my help.

It is a terrifying illness to which we lost a beautiful little boy, Klein, last February.  Minnie has a very mild case when compared to his.  Thankfully.  We do not medicate her at all or keep phenobarbital on hand for her.  Hers is simply not severe enough to warrant this drastic medical interference.  Klein was on the stuff nearly the whole of his short life.  He sounded like a train when he walked and if we brought him into public people stopped to stare.  He really loved people.  He was sick and he grew fat though we watched his diet closely, he was Stealth.  He would always make it into the dining room with the children when they were small and was what our vet calls “an easy keeper” which means that he did not need much food to live.  In human beings we call this a slow metabolism.  The only thing that made Klein angry was wasabi peas.  He was a great wasabi warrior.

I look at my watch.  It is 5:12 am.  Minnie and I look out the window together.  The sky is brighter now but the forest is still all shadows.  The black has turned to grey with hues of green now.  It will incrementally change according to the neighboring rooster and the thousands of songbirds who help the sun chase the shadows down into the ground so that the sun may nourish the forest with its light.

Minnie cuddles herself down into the bed for a nap and I join her.  The wind and the birds are our lullaby.

Categories: Dogs, Friendship, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario, Writing | Leave a comment

Tiny House Listings

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Laura

Recently, the good people at Tiny House Listings asked me to write a guest post for their on line magazine.  They wanted me to write about what it is like to live in a Tiny House.  I chose to write more about what it is like to live inside of the ongoing Tiny House Ontario project.

I feel really happy about this opportunity.  They are a very well known site in the Tiny House Community.  I would guess that they are among the top three or four of well known Tiny House websites.  It was exciting to be asked to write for them, so exciting in fact that I made a couple of grammar errors because I did not proof read well in my excitement!  Oops!

Tiny House Listings have a website that allows people who are seeking a Tiny House of their own to shop specifically for property under 400 square feet.  They also feature other Tiny Housers and Tiny House builders on their site.

They are also on Facebook and have a load of fans!

It was nice to be asked over!

Categories: Forest, Money, Off Grid, Ontario, Simple living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, Writing | Leave a comment

Crazy Crazy Glued

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Laura

When I purchased the four foot counter top for my place and it was 2 and 3/4 inches too short I just sighed a little and accepted it.  This may have been the right thing to do in retrospect.

I put a piece of wood in there and aside from the appearance, it worked just fine for me at that size and shape.

Still, I was visiting the Home Hardware in Gananoque and getting a  piece of plywood cut and noticed that there was a piece, the same as mine, left over and sitting in the waste and thought I should ask.  The young lad doing the cutting said that the counter guy was gone and therefore he would not let me buy it and told me to come back the next day.

Next day, I went and talked to Diana who asked me to show her the piece – she went back with me to see it and talk to the guy and the store manager Laura said – if the lads can cut it, I can have it… so I left it too them.  Jim, showed the patience of Job and did an excellent job with the cut which was a funny one because it goes under the stairs.  I brought it home and it slid right into spot.  One problem though was that the little cut end was still exposed – but ever frugal, I had a little sample of the counter top, so I used my Japanese saw and custom fit it for the end.

Anyway – this is when things got hinky.  They did not have crazy glue at the store so I got the store brand and this came to so fast that I had the stuff everywhere.  It covered my left hand and sadly, I glued myself right to the little counter top.  I can tell you that gluing your fingers together is NOTHING but if you glue yourself to something smooth like a new counter, you are in trouble and do you know, it hurts too.  I took the counter out and went outside and used an exacto-blade to cut myself free.  Left a good layer of skin there. I also needed to get a manicure because took so much skin and nail off of the left hand.

Still, the counter is in and it looks finished now that I have scraped my thumb off it.

Thanks to Gananoque Home Hardware for all the effort… I wonder if you might be able to help me with the bit missing from my thumb?

 

 

Categories: Tiny House Ontario, Writing | Leave a comment

I’ll Never Gnome

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Laura

Another confession: I believe that Garden Gnomes have magical power.  It sounds totally illogical; I get that.  I mean, I understand that they are cement, or resin or something man made and I also know that they are, largely, made in giant factories.  Still, there is something enchanted about (some of) them.

I have not always thought this.  As a matter of fact, until a few years ago, I never gave Garden Gnomes a second glance or even a moment of consideration.   Everything changed about 12 years ago, I was a newly wed and even more newly living in Munich, Germany. I worked for NATO which was all the way across town on Cosimastrasse.  I had just started to learn the language and did not even know enough German yet to be able to order a semmel or to  ask for directions.  After a particularly long day at work, I accidentally transferred to the wrong bus and had no idea where I was, so I asked the driver in my best Genglish… and he suggested (I think) that I should get off and walk two blocks to the East and get on the correct bus.  This is when I got really lost.

I did not yet have a cell phone, and I was really panicked.  It is more than just a little scary to be alone in a foreign country when you cannot speak the language.  I walked, lost and lost in my own worry too.   I came to a small cottage style house which had a huge yard with a stream running though it.  The entire garden was filled with perhaps 200 Garden Gnomes who were working very hard on the property.  They had wheelbarrows and shovels, rakes, buckets, they were crossing the bridge.  Some were on break and sitting on spotted mushrooms, reading books, falling in love, chatting among themselves.  Others were enjoying a lovely picnic.  It was magic.  The property was perfectly meticulous and every single Gnome was well groomed and perfectly detailed as well as situationally detailed.   Seeing them, my worry washed away and I was drawn into their world.  I walked around the little picket fence and looked at each of them, wishing as much now that I had a camera as well as a cell phone, because I thought, no one is going to believe this.  So lovely, so fantastic, I stayed there perhaps an hour watching them.

It was coming to dusk and so I thought I will walk back again about 30 blocks to where I transferred and see if I can get home to my family and I memorized the route as I walked so that I could come back again with a camera.

Eventually, I did get home, and though I tried to get back to show my family that little cottage and the hard working Gnome community, I could never find it or them.  We put miles and miles on our punch buggy looking for them.

Perhaps they were taken, house and all by the Garden Gnome Liberationists?  This rogue organization is connected to the European Gnome Sanctuary is plagued with issues of their own.

After this, I guess, it is no surprise, I am interested in these wonderful little guys and when I arrived back in Canada, I bought a few Gnomes.  They have become faded and sad looking over the years.  This year with the Tiny House built, I thought I would wash them and repaint them True to the magical Gnome – they come back to life with a bit of attention.

Here is their renewal.  Now I am going to hang out with my Gnomies… Boom-bada-bing!

“To my amazement I have heard that there are people who have never seen a gnome. I can’t help pitying these people. I am certain there must be something wrong with their eyesight.”

~ Axel Munthe, Swedish psychiatrist, 1857-1949

Categories: Art, Open your eyes, Tiny House Ontario, View, Writing | 4 Comments

Something Very Unusual.

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Laura

So, let me give you some preemptive information.  When I downsized a while ago, I thought I lost something which is important to me.  It is something very strange, and one of a kind, and probably weird.  Still, I think that by this post, number 101, you have already come to understand that I do not ever want to be a sheep (not an ordinary sheep anyway) and I guess the those who look at and read my blog also desire the unusual.

When I was a kid there was this thingamajig at the house of my grandma Violet Augusta Compton (Rickards) and my grandpa Robert Charles Rickards.  I would pick up the jar it was in and look at it for hours when I was a little girl.  I don’t know… I guess I thought it fascinating, you know, I still do.

I need to go back even farther… My great grandmother Violet Augusta Henderson (Compton) and my great grandfather Frances Gilbert Compton were living on the Carey-on Farm, on what is now the Rudledge Road, leading to Sydenham in Ontario.  The great depression was on when they moved there.  Times had been very hard… they had lost a lot.  This was their fourth home during those years. They could not keep up the payments and had been forced to move on, and move on, and move on.  They had nothing but kids to feed a couple of black faced sheep.  Sadly one of the sheep miscarried a malformed babe just after they arrived there.  The baby was stillborn with two and a half feet on every leg.  A sort of siamese triplet.  For some reason, my great grandfather who we all called Dad, took the foot off that poor lost babe to show it to others because he had never seen anything like it.  At this time in history, I guess, you would look it up on the internet, but then, word of mouth and show-&-tell was about all they had.

Anyway, the depression began to grind to a halt, and things got a lot better for Dad and Ma and their family.  But that unusual sheep’s foot was there and somehow it became sort of synonymous for changing luck – like a rabbit’s foot… not so lucky for the rabbit – but you understand, just one of those funny talismans.  Personal to us.

Anyway, my grandma gave me the foot many years back.  I had a rough time as a single mom and I guess she thought I could use the upswing… and now you know why I was so sad to lose it, happy to find it and now I will share it with you.

Here is the tiny footlet.  It is just an inch and a half long and from spring of 1937 (if I remember correctly); it is 75 years old.

Categories: Kingston, Nature, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Stuff, Tiny House Ontario, Writing | Leave a comment