I fell off the wagon.

Last month, I fell off the blogging wagon. I wrote only one post in the entire month of April.

As a newly separated and somewhat disaffected SAHM, I wanted to blog. But my energy was consumed by Stressful Life Changes and Tedious Tasks.

Adam and I are still rearranging our lives into two separate households. And for the last fortnight, Six was on his school holidays. I really had no time to blog. However, I was able to rant on Twitter. (See for yourself here.)

I whimpered and tweeted. And yet, I missed sharing my musings with you here—those naked, personal thoughts that a sane or normal person would keep to herself. Could I stretch my hours to include blogging? I wondered.

What I needed was some extrinsic motivation. Something to help me recapture the desire to overshare on my blog.

For many people, wages are a good incentive. But wages are rare in blogging. It seems that I must “make do” with another round of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month).

So, I will post every day in May. Maybe the fear of failing this challenge will motivate me to blog.


Project Firewood was a success. Thank you to you and you and you.
You know who you are. I've been thinking about you a lot, and postcards soon will be in the post, full of my scribbled thanks and gratitude. Because I am grateful, even though I am no good at expressing gratitude. You helped me step away from a ledge, and I never will be able to thank you enough.

Thank you, kind beautiful people.

Dear Small, But Devoted Readership:

Thank you, kind beautiful people. You know who you are.

Soon you will be receiving a postcard full of heartfelt thanks from me via snail mail. Something you can put on your fridge. I will use (and keep confidential) your PayPal shipping address. If this is the wrong address for anyone, please email me.

I am so grateful, you lovely people. I am thinking New Age thoughts about you. Wishing you lifetimes of happiness, health, and good fortune.

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I know these are bad times for lots of people. I am still mostly out of work in rural New Zealand, and I need help. I hate that I don’t have a book to sell you. All I have right now is this blog. My blog of two years, which I have written for the love. That is, FOR FREE.

If you happen to have lots of disposable income, and you are wondering which nonprofit charity to support, may I suggest Juli and Six of Wellington Road? I only ask because I don’t know how I will make it through the next month.

Maybe nobody knows how they will make it through. But clinging to this precipice is scaring me.

My income has been reduced since Adam and I separated. But my landlords, who enjoy bleeding stones, have raised my rent. (They raise my rent every year. They like to hear me whimper.)

I need to move to a cheaper house. This is probably a good thing, as we aren't happy with Six's school. (More on this in another post.)

In the meantime, there’s the rubbish bill and car maintenance and doctor’s visits. I need to pay someone to mow these stupid lawns. Six needs winter clothes and school supplies. It is past time to order firewood (the method by which we heat our house in winter).

In New Zealand, the cost of living is high. Housing prices here are among the most expensive in the world. Petrol is not cheap either (about US$8 a gallon). There is no such thing as a spontaneous trip to the mall. I MUST combine trips. Food is also expensive (US$10 for a gallon of milk).

I consider my budget so carefully. When Six is with me, we have wholesome meals. But on the weekends, when Six is with his dad, I try not to buy anything. I make a game out of it—how cheap can I eat?

I am working it all out. But I don’t want to choose between firewood and food. I am on the dole, but the benefit only goes so far. Same with family assistance. I am underemployed.

I don’t like putting this out there. No, I don’t have a book. I would love to sell you one. But I have creative skills, a broadband internet connection, and a post shop. Hire me? If you have a spare twenty, will you drop it in my tip jar? (It's in my sidebar.) Let me know what I can swap for money.

P.S. If you are local, maybe you want to buy some of my stuff? YOU CAN CLUTTER UP YOUR GARAGE WITH MY STUFF.

The river house.

In the 1950s, my granny’s dad built a house by the Susquehanna River, south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We called it the river house. It had three bedrooms and a large enclosed porch. Under the porch, there was a work shop with a second toilet and a primitive sink. After the remnants of a hurricane, the river once rose and flooded the house.

The river house was near a small town where a famous baseball player was born. The house sat back from an isolated little road, which lay like a pale grey ribbon next to a railway line. Twice a day freight trains rattled past the house.

You couldn’t see the river house from the road. A narrow driveway had been cut through a tall hedge, which threatened to swallow your car before you were released into an open pocket beside the house. In the adjacent garden marigolds grew as big as saucers. A long path led to a picnic shelter surrounded by mature oak trees, and eventually to the Susquehanna River.

The river was two miles wide, and there was an island in the middle of the river. But the cooling towers from the nuclear plant at Three Mile Island still towered over you like sentinels.

Three Mile Island was a name whose syllables ran together like the branches of the river. It often seemed like just one word, like Susquehanna. “Three-Mile-Island.”

Of course, everyone knows about the accident at Three Mile Island. There was a partial meltdown of the reactor core in one of the plant's two units. It happened three years before my first visit to the river house.

When I was at the river house, nobody seemed concerned about another accident, or whether it was safe to be there. Maybe they were worried, and I just didn't know. I was only twelve years old.

I liked to daydream on a bench by the river. Sometimes I could hear whistles from the plant at Three Mile Island. People made eerie announcements over a public address system. There were clouds of white steam that rose from the active towers. I wondered if the steam was filled with radioactive particles.

The towers followed me everywhere. I could see them from the hills above the river valley. At night, the lights on the towers made them seem other-worldly, like spaceships in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

It didn’t occur to me that someone might try—try!—to crash into the towers with a airplane, or to block the cooling-water intake pipes in the river. Those thoughts came much later, after the river house was sold, and my granny’s dad passed away.