Life has taken a sudden wrong turn off the road to building our cabin, resulting in the past week being very much like going on that bear hunt I mentioned a few posts ago.

Ever play that game at Girl Scout Camp? It's more or less a lap-clapping group activity best experienced in the dark, in the forest, around a campfire. The story unfolds at a leisurely pace...you know...just going on a bear hunt. Nothing special. When suddenly, you reach an obstacle, such as a stream. "You can't go around it," the group say-and-clap-along goes, "you can't go over it, you can't go under it."

You have to go through it.

Life is like that. And our family is going through it right now.

About a week ago my husband's 83-year-old mother fell down 3 steps and shattered her ribs: 13 breaks in all, not including her collar bone and a vertebrae. Since it happened in North Carolina, she was sent to Wilmington for treatment.

The hospital is top-notch, and she is getting the care she needs. But it's in Wilmington, and her family is not. In Wilmington. So PW and I have been trading off with his sister and her husband, each spending a few days with Mom and a few days back at home.

It's kind of exhausting, and not just because of all the driving. The most exhausting part is actually all the sitting.

There's a lot of sitting in a hospital. Sitting in a waiting room. Sitting in the hospital room. Sitting down to talk with the physician. Sitting in the car when you just can't sit in those other places any longer.

Apparently when you're on a bear hunt, and you can't go around it or over it or under it, you do have another option other than going through it.

You can just sit your butt in a chair and wait.

No one tells you that at Girl Scouts, and as soon as I'm done sitting, I'm going to write a strongly worded letter to National Headquarters.

Tomorrow it's our turn to sit again, and my sister-in-law and her husband can go home and stand up for a few days.

The campfire Bear Hunt version of the game encounters many obstacles on the way to finding that bear. Life is like that: full of grassy savannas to snake through, rushing rivers to cross, oozing mud to get stuck in, and dark, dank caves to scare the poo-poo out of you. And when you reach your destination your only option sometimes is to re-trace your footsteps, over and through and around and under all those obstacles you encountered on the way there. Back to health, and safety, and normalcy.

The Hospital Bear Hunt version sometimes seems just as scary and daunting. Both versions of the "game" require courage and strength and determination. Yes, the Hospital Bear Hunt does require plenty of seating for those who are tracking that elusive bear, but the moral of the story is the same, whether you're hunting bears over a campfire or over ANOTHER cup of bad hospital coffee:

"Let's not go bear-hunting any more."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_ShP3fiEhU

I just "celebrated" another birthday. I say "" because it is never, ever a celebration for me. Even as a child I hated the attention. Mom would plan a party and I would get a nose bleed. But while the steady progression of time is a definite downer for me, I do enjoy cake. And the only time I get my favorite--Piggly Wiggly white cake with lard icing--is  September 17.

So there's that.

We waited until last weekend to "celebrate" at the cabin with our daughter. Poor kid...she knew the mood de jour would be all "I look like the crypt keeper." As if that wasn't bad enough, she also knew she was signing up for a working weekend, hanging tongue-and-groove boards under the roof. But she made the trip anyway. With the three of us, we really made headway sealing up the roof overhang. And she made the crypt keeper happy.

Also on the cabin to-do list:  installing, taping and mudding the master bathroom green board. The taping and mudding was my job, and I did it extremely well. I really like doing it; the paste is easy to apply with a spatula, and it reminded me of the white icing on my birthday cake.

Unless you've lived without sheetrock in your bathroom, and I pray that you have not, you will just have to imagine how wonderful it is to have even the modicum of privacy which a bit of sheetrock affords. Some may think green board is just for protecting walls from moisture. Some may even think that its sole purpose is providing a vertical surface to hang wallpaper. And these thinks are true. But in the wee hours of the morning, when my dreams take me to watery places where the sound of H2O comes crashing against my subconscious, it is beyond description how nice it is to pee into my Luggable Loo (a $20 gray paint bucket with a plastic toilet seat and lid) behind a REAL WALL.

No door. Not yet. And the rest of the bathroom is wide open. But there is a private corner that is all mine, at night.

Also on our punch list last weekend was finishing the grouting between the master bathroom tiles.

Most of this work had already been done on a previous trip, but there was a small space that still needed grout squirted in the seams. The grout comes in a tube and is applied with a squirt gun. You just squeeze the trigger and grout magically goes into the seams between the tiles. It's a little messy; grout spills over onto the tops of tiles and needs to be wiped with a damp cloth, but it's fun. Like Play-Doh, only thinner, stickier, and available in decorator colors. We chose Pearl Gray. Doesn't that sound rare and special and like something you could make jewelry out of? I kept calling it Battleship Gray which PW kind of liked, being a Navy man.

But when I finally stood up to survey my work, I found a lot of Battleship Pearl Gray smeared like cancerous patches all over my legs, fingers, elbows, cheeks, and everywhere else I scratched without thinking. Maybe more on me than on the floor. I can't be sure. What I do know is that I needed a bath. Besides the Navy-Doh, my sweaty corpus was dusted with saw from the aforementioned tongue-and-groove work. Yes, a hose shower from the frigid well water was just what I needed, but definitely not what I wanted.

I think PW took delight in my extra grubbiness because as a birthday surprise, he got an instant-on shower sprayer.

Make no mistake: It is NOT a shower. There is no privacy,  and you have to bathe outside in your bathing suit. If you want to wash your hair, you must lean your soapy head over the railing and hose off all that lather onto the red clay below. But the hose water, hooked up to a propane tank, is deliciously hot coming out of that Ritz-Carlton-esque shower head.

I felt like a queen. A queen who finds spiders in her jammies at night, but a queen nonetheless.

So this weekend when we return to Cold Mountain, we will have a dried-in bathroom with still no working toilet (just my trusty bucket.) We will have green board up and ceramic tile down. We will have a good portion of the soffit work complete with a good portion still left to do. And thanks to my thoughtful husband's birthday gift, we will have hot water.

And that, my dear friends, at this point in my aging life, is reason to celebrate.

It was a productive trip to Cold Mountain last weekend. We passed a major inspection--electrical, plumbing and framing. We Boracare'd the exterior log cabin walls, we pulled off all the black plastic as well as the gozillion staples that had been holding the black plastic, we filled in all the crevices around the windows and doors and sealed up all the electrical holes, and we began laying tile in the bathroom.

What we didn't do was get mauled by a bear.

It rained Thursday night and when we awoke the next morning we received our first confirmation that there really are bears in them thar woods. Everyone keeps telling us about them but up till now, it's been like the Loch Ness monster: a fictitious thing that you sometimes think you WANT to believe is out there, but you can neither confirm nor deny their existence based on the evidence.

And so you go on with your life. But just to be sure, you don't go swimming in Loch Ness.

We now have bear evidence. A surprisingly large mud cast of a paw.

Does this mean we should give up hiking? When we vacationed in Alaska, we didn't let the threat of bears bother us. We did take precautions though. We made sure we didn't get between a mama and her cub. We kept our distance in the Kenai River where they fished for salmon. And we wore bear bells while hiking. And talked really loud. We did our research and knew what to do if/when we encountered a grizzly.

This situation is no different. Forewarned is forearmed. No; strike that. Forewarned is for keeping your arms.

So I googled "What do you do if you see a black bear?" Presented below are the ACTUAL steps they recommend.

Number One: Stop what you are doing and evaluate the situation.

Too late to stop what I'm doing. Number One IS what I'm doing, and it's trickling down my leg this very minute. And evaluate the situation?? It sounds like the bear is receiving his mid-year  performance assessment. If that's Step One, I think the committee that came up with it should at least start the sentence with the prepositional phrase, "If you haven't already been mauled,..."

Number Two: Identify yourself.

"Me human."

To which the bear replies, "Well you were," and wipes his mouth with his paw. "You now lunch meat. Burp."

The rest of the steps seem kind of moot at this point. But just in case you're ever in the situation:

Number Three is: "Speak in an appeasing tone." You know, something like, "good bear."

Number Four is: "Back away slowly, preferably in the direction you came." Who needs to be told to not walk TOWARD the bear? I want to know what this person is doing in the woods AT ALL.

And Number Five is: "Walk, don't run, at all times keeping your eye on that bear." Because walking backwards in the forest is the best vantage point for watching your intestines spill out.

I truly hope to see every living thing that calls Cold Mountain home, from the turkeys and chipmunks and birds  and mice and bats to the wild things that roar their terrible roars, and gnash their terrible teeth, and roll their terrible eyes, and show their terrible claws like in Maurice Sendak's children's book entitled, Where the Wild Things Are. I welcome you all. And I do hope to see the bears.

But maybe from the porch.

I'm calling it low-grade depression.

Like a C- on the paper you turned in, thinking you did pretty all right, only to be told that your hard work was not even really average. My depression is like that; nothing spectacular or eyebrow-raising, which, actually, makes me more depressed to think about. If you're going to do something, do it really well, right?! Be the best depressed person you can be!

This is my life we're talking about though. Not a school paper. And I'm tired.

The house has been on the market for 3 months now. We've lowered the price several times already and are struggling to understand why somebody has not snatched this jewel up.

We've gotten comments like: "I love the floors!" and comments like: "The floors are a definite drawback." Some people say it's not big enough. Others say it's too large.

OK. I get that people have different tastes. But this is our home. This is The House where we had Easter egg hunts when the kids were little. This is The House where we hosted Hillbilly Halloween and I put on a most-embarrassing clogging demonstration for 2 of our closest friends. This is The House That PW and Lisa Built, if you'll pardon the reference to Randolph Caldecott's poem. And the rest of you egg-timers out there shopping for your dream home just need to get a clue.

Of course even I can hear the masked anger in my low-grade depression. But it is also pure exhaustion.

Do you know how difficult it is to keep a home in "show" shape? Especially if you're the kind of person who thinks a nice layer of dust actually protects wood surfaces? I've been on my knees a lot, and not all of it has been in prayer. Sometimes you just have to get down in the weeds and we've had 3 months of constant weeding.

Meanwhile, work on our other home continues. Yea! More work! And this time, there's no indoor toilet!

We're making progress though. We finished the electrical wiring on our last trip. That means we're ready for a major inspection, which should take place this week. All the framing is done, and the septic tank is in. This weekend we'll be sealing around windows and staining the exterior logs. It's hard work, but rewarding.

After all, I do love a story. And stories are like a bear hunt: you can't go over it, you can't go under it. You have to go THROUGH it. (Cue Girl Scout campfire...)

We're certainly going through it. But years from now I will still remember the "High Five" PW and I gave each other when every single outlet had been wired and stripped and clipped and rolled up in its respective little blue box, ready for the critical eye of the inspector. I will remember my husband's wide grin when he told me,  "We make a great team!" I will remember sitting in my bathing suit on a folding chair in the rain, letting Mother Nature rinse the layer of dirt and sweat off me. I will remember watching the Perseid Meteor Shower in a moonless midnight sky at our place on Cold Mountain where there is no light pollution. I will remember PW and I saying simultaneously, "A SHOOTING STAR!"  I will remember the cute little mouse who currently keeps us company, and the neighbors who beep their horns and wave to us. I will remember the first male goldfinch at the feeder, and the hummingbirds that buzz the tops of our heads on their way to the nectar we put out. And those crazy, retarded black and yellow bees with helicopter wings that we have yet to identify.

And I'll remember the family who comes along--finally--and in God's good time, and buys our precious home. And I'll remember, even though it hasn't happen yet, how we sat across from them at the closing table, listening to them tell us how much they love our home, and how afraid they were that we wouldn't accept their offer. That thought, more than any other, raises that low-grade depression to at least a B+.

We spent 4th of July week on Cold Mountain, working mostly on wiring the cabin. While we were there, a turkey visited us, as well as  Eastern Phoebes, a nuthatch, a male scarlet tanager and several red-bellied woodpeckers. Occasionally butterflies fluttered by, and at night, those magical fireflies. Our little mice did not show up this time, but we were impressed with the "gift basket" they left in the basement. They had chewed off some of the purple polyester fur from our little parrot's cozy tent as well as several green and yellow strands from his blanket, then carefully arranged the material into a very colorful round nest. We gave it its due admiration and then promptly destroyed it.

When our workday was done, we spent several lovely afternoons cooling off in our neighborhood's mountain lake. With temperatures climbing above 90 degrees in the cabin loft, the cold clear water was a welcome relief. The first time we ventured in, several dozen curious bream swam right up to us. There is no fishing in the swimming lake, and the bream seemed to know we were no threat to them. It was like swimming in an aquarium, and the fish followed us everywhere.

The next day we returned with bread.

Standing waist-deep in the water, I felt like Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places...you know that scene  near the end when they've cornered the market and start to cherry-pick who they're going to buy from? I pulled off a small piece of bread and chose a fish to give it to. Each fish chosen took the bread and came back for more. Even a 3-foot-long catfish, swimming slowly like a great white, came over to investigate.

The thing about feeding fish, though, is that they do enjoy a good meal. And emboldened with the realization that we were absolutely no threat to them, many began to explore my white-bread belly, nibbling on it and outlining the button part with tiny red incisions.

OK. Time to go, I told PW. I do not want the headline of my obituary to read, "Bream Swim Turns Grim." We dried off and sat in the Adirondack chairs for a spell, enjoying the sunshine before returning to our construction project.

The next day, I realized I should have stayed in the water and taken my chances with the fish. The Adirondack chairs were full of chiggers, which is what we East Tennesseeans call red bugs. Red bugs are very small, very insidious little creatures that love the warmest, most moist places of the human body. They are experts at seeking them out, and they found all of mine. And me with no nail polish--supposedly the best home remedy for relieving yourself of those pesky little mites. Who knew I would need nail polish for stringing electrical wire?

But wait. It gets better.

PW had entrusted me with tacking up wire and coiling it in the receptacle boxes, unsupervised. I was getting pretty good at it, feeling as if I was actually making a meaningful contribution. I was in the kitchen--or where the kitchen will be--when a big black carpenter ant crawled up on the board in front of me. I was planning to tack to that board, so I tried to swat the ant away.

Did you know that, when threatened, the black carpenter ant has a pretty handy defense mechanism? It can shoot formic acid out of its rear end to deter a predator.

I did not know that. And I took his defense mechanism right in my left eye.

Burned like a mother. Apparently he did not appreciate my carpentry skills.

PW poured water in my eye to flush it out and then doused it with contact solution. The next day when we returned home (READ: "to civilization,") the doctor gave me an antibiotic ointment to prevent infection. I'm fairly confident my eye will recover, but that ant is toast, believe me.

So the take-away lessons from our week of work is just this:  1) There is a very good reason why electrical wiring should be done by a licensed professional.  2) Respect nature. It's their world, homies. We're just living in it. And 3) Take heart in the words of Madeline L'Engle, who so aptly put that, "It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter."

Laughter, after all, is the best medicine. Even for formic acid.

Lately we've taken a vacation from working on our vacation home. (That's an oxymoron if ever there was one.) Other trips and several flights of house guests have kept us home for a while. It has been a nice hiatus, not having to go to our get-away spot to do manual labor, but now it's time to get back to work. I dread the thought of what those industrious little spiders have been weaving in our absence.

We're headed back up there this weekend to begin stringing electrical wire. I feel I already have experience in this department since I was allowed to single-handedly nail up the outlet boxes. (To clarify, I was allowed to nail them up after PW showed me how to do it by nailing up half of them himself. I did the other half though, and got the distinct impression that I had done most of them correctly...)

We'll also be moving rocks. When the excavation for the basement was done, we suddenly found ourselves with a great big pile of boulders. We rolled, dragged, and even lifted some fairly good-sized ones down to the back of the cabin and wedged them up against the dirt as the beginning of a retaining wall on each side. Next we chose flat rocks of approximately the same size and shape for easy stacking. PW was in charge of putting together the vertical rock jigsaw puzzle. My dear friend from Asheville came down and offered the best idea: she suggested that we plant ferns and mosses and short ground cover in the spaces between the stones and it will look as if we meant it as an accent piece, not as erosion control.

I love her.

But back to PW and his quest for perfect rocks.

He chose each flat one with great care. I could tell it was with "great care" because his tongue was stuck in the side of his mouth, which is what he always does when he's ciphering. I brought him a rock. He and his tongue evaluated it as if I was a bowerbird who had decorated an elaborate panoply with my rock, hoping to attract a mate. He either accepted my offering as suitable, or he soundly rejected it and told me to go get another one. Just like the bowerbird, I was justifiably elated when he liked my rock, and equally deflated when my offering was rejected. And still, I kept bringing those darned rocks, hoping for approval.

So now we have built a 4-foot high rock retaining wall, with grandiose plans to finish it this weekend. The good news is that the entire basement is now framed out--not a simple task although it did get simpler when PW bought an air nail gun. We are also gradually moving things up to the cabin from our storage shed(s). So far we have brought the following essential household items: wine glasses and coffee cups.

And a lamp.

We have moved the kitchen bar up there, which provides us a place to lay the blueprints. Our old mattress is up there, wrapped in plastic. Toilets and sinks are sitting in their respective bathroom-to-be's. Also we have a macaw-sized indoor/outdoor aviary for our pretty green bird. Maybe not an essential household item to some, but Cadeau likes it.

I have single-handedly removed all the staples from the interior log walls. I've sucked up pounds of saw dust and more bent nails than the wet-vac can handle. And it is my mission to keep the cabin spider-web-free.

So think of me when you're doing what you're doing this weekend. Because I'll be working. Working on our dream cabin on Cold Mountain, where the lightning bugs still exist, even those elusive Blue Ghosts. Working on kicking the smaller of the large rocks down the hill to PW, and hopefully not hitting him. And sometimes also working, like Butterfly McQueen in Gone With The Wind, at being busy doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before.

Don't squeal on me to PW...

Work on erecting our cabin on Cold Mountain was supposed to have begun several months ago. Seems there are plans, and then there is reality. That's why plans are best laid. Aside, I guess.

After the basement was erected and T.H.P. and I weather-proofed it, we waited for the contractor to install the subfloor. Well, we thought we were waiting for the contractor to install the subfloor. Apparently what we were really waiting for was for bad weather to roll in, since that's what happened. Now we're into February--the rainy season on Cold Mountain. (BTWs, when it "rains" at 2400' elevation in the winter, it's not "rain.")

Only recently has the subfloor gone up, and the basement framed in. With all the precip, though, the basement was more like a kiddy pool, for like, 24 kiddies. Eskimo kiddies. Nevertheless, we began to get our first real feel for the theater room, bedroom and mechanical room that will be on the ground floor.

We were so excited to see the basement take shape. Instead of imagining what the ground floor would look like, we could now actually see how the stairs come down from the middle of the kitchen on the main floor, to a landing with a window right there at knee height, and culminating in a walled-in bedroom with no egress whatsoever.

Hey, wait a minute. That ain't right....

My husband studied on it for a moment, and then seemed to be giving considerable thought to how he would address the issue with the builder. He pointed out that the stairs to the basement were not accessed upstairs from the middle of the kitchen. There was a bit of a friendly disagreement as the builder continued to insist it had been done correctly.

That's when T.H.P., kindly but firmly, went to get those blueprints.

"No, man," he said, physically turning to face the basement sliding glass door hole and pointing to the plans, "the stairs dump out here, in front of that door."

Two grown men stood there, hands on hips, staring up at the very large hole in the subfloor, and contemplating the day's work it had taken those men to frame up the basement backwards. They both looked down at the plans, and then up at the basement sliding glass door hole, back down at the plans, and then behind them at the framed-up staircase. It was synchronized ciphering as they oriented themselves to the obvious reality that someone screwed up.

I kind of liked the window in the stairway.

Thankfully, though, the error was caught and corrected before the logs went up. That would have been a big deal.

Then there was the footer issue. When excavating for the support pads (deep and wide holes filled with concrete on which beams that support the roof and porches sit) the track hoe fellows encountered a rock ledge on the left side of the cabin. New footers had to be dug in something everyone kept referring to as "virgin soil." The result, after much deliberating by the menfolk, was T.H.P. and me making a Lowe's run that night  for 18 bags of concrete weighing 80 lbs. each. The next morning he poured concrete mix into the new footer holes while I made trips with a 5-gal. bucket to get water from a 50-gallon trash can he had rigged up with a spigot. The work crew took a break while Paul mixed and I toted...but they were very complimentary about how well I kept up with my little bucket brigade. 

We're back on track now and everything is progressing well. Knock. On. Wood. Logs. It's really exciting to see our getaway--and one day, our retirement home--take shape. Lincoln logs are being stacked, and we who are easily entertained are giddy with future possibilities. I can walk into a real log cabin shell now and imagine the master bedroom with a bark accent wall and a sliding chicken door (another story ENTIRELY.) I can stand in the kitchen where there is not, now, a gaping hole in the floor, imagining myself at the sink putting up preserves. I can stand in the great room with the great view, even if there aren't any windows yet. As our 3-sided porch takes shape, I can stand out there too, imagining me and T.H.P. perched on high Adirondack chairs and snuggled in blankets, reverently taking in another gorgeous sunrise.

We can picture ourselves there. It's a special thing: to picture yourself somewhere you really want to be. We're finding it's an even specialer thing to have some hand in helping to build that picture. Our tree house picture may have had a few setbacks--from weather, and workmen, and whatever--but we're making a home. And we can see ourselves in it.