A Long Absence

So last week we were up in Seattle before Thanksgiving, and it snowed, and we had a good time, and I stopped blogging. One night I was gearing up to get to work on the computer and I felt so tired and uninspired and thought, "Why am I doing this, anyway?" Then I felt obligated to come up with something even so, because it was my fifth November in a row of doing the post-every-day thing and I didn't want to give up so close to the end.

But I stopped anyway. I figured nobody else would care as much as I did, and I found that I didn't care all that much. It would be better to skip a day or two, I reasoned, than burden poor readers with stupid two-sentence updates about the snow in Seattle and what we did that day with our relatives.

And then one or two days turned into 10 and here we are, now. Nothing tragic happened, nothing terribly interesting happened, and I failed to blog every day in November. And I really enjoyed the break, which makes me think it was a good idea. It's December now, and I think December is a great time for reasonably low-volume blogging because there are so many other things going on.

I hope all of you are enjoying this season of travel and parties and visitors and cookies and snow and advent and carols and so on. Peace out.

What's The Point?

This post is part of Multi Family Living Mondays, a series of articles on co-housing and multi-family living.

I've spent the last several multi-family living posts focusing on a few specific concerns that were raised after my guest post about co-housing went up. Since then, I've done some further thinking about the purpose of writing about shared housing and all that goes with it here, on my otherwise personal and topically random blog. And it's not really because there's a huge group of people out there wanting to know more, or because I want that to become my primary focus, or because I want everyone I know to try combining households with someone else in some crazed mass social experiment.

It is because in our almost-one-year of living together, all four of the adults in our house have grown and changed and been challenged quite a bit by our unusual circumstance, and writing about some of that here is a way of remembering all that we have learned. Another reason is that there are others out there in similar situations - some by choice, but many by necessity. And I can only imagine that it's harder when it's by necessity than when you've made the choice more or less freely. Even though there are nearly infinite flavors of shared housing and combined household configurations, I bet there are some similar issues that come up again and again even for very different people. So this is a place for me to explore some of that, and hopefully serve as a (small) resource for people who are looking for encouragement, ideas, or conversation.

Speaking of resources, a recent comment led me to discover this website, which I have only partially explored, but it has a lot more content about this subject than I have put up so far, and I would encourage anyone who is interested to check it out!

Memories

We drove up to Seattle this afternoon through the snow. It seemed pretty bad in the middle of the trip, but there's nothing to show for it up here. Maybe it will snow tonight, though.

In response to yesterday's post, my friend Sunny reminded me of the time we went running late at night and came across a hedgehog. We saw a hedgehog or two during a different running excursion and that time we were assaulted by a laser beam coming from a window about 12 stories up in a neighboring apartment building. The laser followed us around the track, and I have to admit it was pretty creepy - it was really dark and we couldn't identify our assailant so our imaginations ran a bit wild. We ended up leaving the field after dodging the little red light and trying to hide from it without success. It was probably just some young kid trying to pass the time, and I hope he had fun, because we quite enjoyed telling the story.

Saturday Song Suggestion

This week I would like to suggest Rehab, by Amy Winehouse. (Embedding has been disabled.)

This song was super popular my second year in Croatia, and when I hear it I think of the smoky cafes in Rijeka. I drank so many of the tiny lattes they offered, often burnt or otherwise mediocre-tasting, and kind of miss the brusque staff - neither earning nor expecting a tip. One of my roommates that year was Sunny, and for no particular reason we decided this was "our" song.
So, Sunny, this one's for you.

Whoops, Almost Forgot To Blog

Yeah, this November daily blogging habit can be annoying. Anyway, last night I was chewing some gum when there was a loud crunch. 2 seconds later, I pulled out a piece of a molar (actually just part of a filling). Some inspection in the mirror revealed a large hole near the back of my mouth, but thankfully there was no pain, just a little sensitivity. This morning I placed a number of calls and got the estimated tooth-fixing time down from 3 weeks to this afternoon. They only did a temporary filling today, and it tastes like cloves. The lady who did the work told me the material contains a lot of clove oil. Who knew? One great thing about temporary fillings is that there was no pain - no needles, no drilling, no anesthesia. Yay!

In other news, my mom is in town for a couple of days and Jesse is going to help slaughter some cows in the morning.

So, um, enjoy your weekend!

This Morning

This morning I found myself alone in the house with Miette - a fairly rare occurrence. I needed both a shower and blog material, and my subconscious decided to meet both needs simultaneously by tossing up the suggestion that I attempt to shower with Miette.

After the last time I tried this, I realize I should have known better, but I figured it might go differently this time since she's a little older. The shower didn't work out very well, but I successfully got my hair washed and nobody was injured. I decided to reward Miette with a proper bath of her own, mainly because it would be fun for her and keep her occupied while I dried my hair, etc.

I hadn't even turned the faucet off yet when she assumed a telltale crouch and a hideous bloom of poop filled the bathwater. I tried not to panic as I pulled her out and rinsed her off, but it was disgusting and we were both wet and naked. After I got us dressed, I set to work cleaning out the tub, transferring substances to the toilet as necessary. Halfway through, I turned just in time to see that Miette had wandered into the bathroom and was at that moment dropping a pair of my underwear into the toilet.

Ahhh, toddlers. What will they think of next?

Grab Bag

• Two interesting, but unrelated, posts about blogging.
• An amusing take on National Blog Posting Month.
• The minds of dogs, hilariously illuminated.
• A lovely birthday party we were able to attend last week. Happy Birthday, friends! Thanks so much for the beautiful evening.