Uncategorized

When a pile of junk becomes inspiration

/ Adventure This Life / Leave a comment
I guess it really is true what they say. “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” or in today’s case, it’s another man’s business.

Today, I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting a local kid who brought so much inspiration to me, and I don’t think he has any idea that he did. No, I didn’t ask permission to write about him, so in the off and unlikely chance he comes across this post, I hope he likes it.

Hidden junk

So far on this blog, I’ve only told you about the beauties and wonders of our dream-like property. But now stuff’s about to get real, real fast.

You see, like perhaps most large areas of personal land, it would appear that a portion of ours was used as a personal dump. Somewhat hard to see at first glance, and hidden off behind some trees on the west side of our pond, you’ll find rusty metal galore. Junk for us, treasure for some. Everything from an ancient pontoon, riding lawn mower, multiple push lawn mowers, barrels of some sort, an old metal mattress spring, and a slew of other unidentifiable metal objects. Many of it partially buried from its 60+ years of being there.

Hidden treasure

Today, when I got home from picking up the kids from school, an unidentifiable young person was at our house with a truck and large trailer.

Turns out it was the “kid” Nick told me about a week ago. He met this “kid” at the brush dump while dropping off crap wood from the many trees he cut down for the garden. The “kid” asked Nick if he could have the wood. Nick was like, “you want to come haul thousands of pounds of wood off my property so I don’t have to? YES PLEASE!” And so he came, and with a broken hand, hefted large tree stumps and branches into his mini van. The “kid” made an impression on Nick that day. This was a kid not afraid of hard work.

Today, he made an impression on me. He showed up and started clearing out our dump pile of metal scraps. He was going to recycle it for cash. This is what he did for money. Not a job, neigh, he doesn’t call it that. What I call it is business, and good business. It’s good for the environment, great for our property, and he just made our lives a heck of a lot easier, all at no cost to us.

sTAyfnTfRZ2fia2U9Rbqtw

The scrap metal loaded up on his trailer. He’s coming back to pick up the rest tomorrow. (Ryker thinks he’s helping.)

Awestruck

There was a brief moment as I was watching this “kid” heft incredibly heavy and sharp rusty objects, without gloves, into his trailer, that I thought, “wow, he works really hard not to have a job.” The thought sounded like judgement, but felt like awe. Here was this junior in high school working his butt off and making good money without getting stuck in the grind of what many jobs offer. Security? Yes. Freedom? No. He told Nick that he makes more money doing this than his brother ever did with “real” jobs. I was, am, impressed.

He saw a unique problem, that likely no one else was solving, and went for it. Now he even has special permission from his school to do pick-ups during the day, and they give him their leftover scraps from their auto shop.

This “kid” at 17 years old knows more about running a successful business and working his butt off than I do, a 35-year old with a masters degree in business. And the clincher of it all, I don’t think he even knows that’s what he’s doing.

93ND614RTWyRUN410l%2NQ

Here he is stopping to pick up some of the wood on his way out. (This is a glimpse of where the garden will be, well, at least part of it. Nick took out about 20+ trees)

Inspired

Although I am always a proponent of learning, no classroom can come close to life experience. This kid taught me more about business in the 15 minutes of chatting with him than my six years of business classes. What he taught me was, like Nike, you just do it. Don’t worry about the perfect business plan, like I have been, finding the right audience first, like I have been, doing all the right marketing, like I’ve been trying to do, but just do it already.

Now, that’s a lot easier said than done. I have 35 years of fear I’m facing, a family I’m supporting, and a lot of self-doubt I’m trying to overcome. But I really want to be like that “kid.”

 

 

Advertisement

Every house has its quirks. Mine is no exception.

/ Adventure This Life / Leave a comment
Like every rose has its thorns, every house has its quirks. And my house is definitely no exception.

Purchased from a frugal elderly couple in their mid 80’s, our house, though from the 40s, was remarkably clean. And remarkably weird. Not at first glance, but within our first few days in our new home we got acquainted rather quickly with our house’s quirky ways.

The house

My beautifully quirky home

When hot is cold and cold is hot

My first shower in the new house was a plethora of surprises. Aside from the petal wilting, nose scrunching, eye tearing rotten egg smell (see this post for why) that overloaded my senses, I also got showered in cold water, EVEN THOUGH the faucet knob was clearly on HOT. So I did the only rational thing, I turned the knob to COLD. Yes! Hot stinky water!

Nearly five months later and we still haven’t fixed the faucet. I’m getting quite used to it now.

Bath of horrors

You already saw the sludge water bath experienced by more poor boys in this post, but there’s more.

You see, we have this decent sized jet tub in our basement. This absolutely thrilled my mom. So, moving weekend she took the liberty of being the first to try it out. All was relatively normal during the bath itself, but when she drained the tub it all drained out onto the floor. Was that supposed to happen? Maybe it was like a two for one kinda thing. Clean yourself and wash the floors all in one go.

This did get fixed. Now everything drains beautifully, but we did have several terrifying experiences of either sludge water or sewage back up into our downstairs bathroom. Ew!

Pond water

Playing in the frozen pond. Looks a bit like the bath sludge water.

1940s septic, grey water system, and dirty toilet paper

Prior to moving into the new house we knew one thing for sure, we’d have to replace the septic. The septic was original to the house. We had no idea how the heck it lasted so long. Well, we soon found out.

  1. The former owner had redirected all the water from the house, except the toilet water (thank God) out into the front yard. Now, this can be kind of a cool thing if it’s done appropriately as a grey water system. Unfortunately it was running directly into the front yard without any filter. Not cool.
  2. We discovered several plastic bags of dirty toilet paper in the garage. And now we get to the heart of it. THEY DIDN’T FLUSH THEIR TOILET PAPER. Turns out they burned it but didn’t get around to burning the last dozen or so bags. We uneccessarily go through a roll of toilet paper a day in my household. The septic simply couldn’t handle that and it’s nastiness started seeping up through the ground while we waited the three weeks to have our septic replaced. Life can be so cool sometimes.

I’m happy to say that we got a brand new septic and Nick was able to redirect the plumbing into it.

IMG_5999

Digging for the new septic

IMG_6072

Placement of the new septic

Mildew and mazes

As if the rotten egg smell coming from our water wasn’t enough, but now all of our “clean” clothes were smelling like mildew. Nick thought maybe it was his deer clothes causing the smell (he had picked up a deer processing job at our local meat market and came home covered in deer blood each night, which meant those bloody clothes ended up in the wash every night). It wasn’t. It was the washer.

It also didn’t help that an 80-minute cycle in our dryer wasn’t getting our clothes dry. At first we thought that was because of the whacky dryer duct work. It coursed through our downstairs ceiling like a maze twisting at 90 degree angles every few feet. It wasn’t. It just needed a new hose.

So, we got a new washer and a new hose for our dryer and no more stinky clothes. Yay!

There were other quirky discoveries upon moving in, like the three foot pile of saw dust in the basement workshop, but, although they caused loads of stress at the time, they also make for good story telling, and that I can appreciate.

IMG_2757

Easter family photo. For your enjoyment 🙂

 

 

Snowed in, sludge water, and rotten eggs

/ Adventure This Life / 2 Comments
Moving to the country has definitely been an adventure, to say the least. And there have been, well, adjustments to learning how to live out here. It definitely hasn’t been easy, but it is kind of fun, even when it’s not, and even when it makes you want to puke.

Snowed in

Let’s talk snow for a minute. Snow in the city is a nuisance, snow out here is, “OMG! I’m totally, no, seriously, I’m trapped in my house!”

With 600+ ft of driveway roughly 9-12″ inches deep in heavy wet snow last week, shoveling the driveway was out of the question. So how have we been handling the ridiculous amount of snow we’ve been getting? By hiring a legit snow plow to plow us out. But what happens when your hired snow plow is broken? You wait until another can come plow you out. And in the case of last week, we waited two days. Which means, unless you’re going to walk to town in 3 ft of snow, you’re S.T.U.C.K. A big bummer when you’re out of groceries. Let’s just say we got real creative in our meals.

Lessons learned:

  1. We need a truck with a plow
  2. Stay stocked up on food in the winter
fullsizeoutput_d07-e1520912484139.jpeg

Part of our 600+ ft driveway

Sludge water

Now this is my favorite least favorite longstanding issues since moving to the country. We have well water. NEVER have I experience well water like this before. And before I continue, yes we did have the well inspected, and yes it passed inspection.

Two weeks into our new home, our perfectly clear water turned yellow and started tasting like a bloody mouth (e.g. iron) — just trying to paint a picture with your senses here — you’re welcome. Then, sludge water happened. Ew!

Here’s how it all went down. The boys needed a bath. As the tub filled up with yellowish water, the boys started blaming each other for peeing in it (hey, it definitely wouldn’t have been the first time). Then something really gnarly happened. It turned into murky brown water that can only best be described as diarrhea water. Are you gagging yet? I even have photographic evidence, if you dare to take a peek.

fullsizeoutput_d08-e1520912328600.jpeg

Sludge water

The water did the same thing to my whites in the laundry, turning them all a disgusting brown. More grossness.

Lessons learned:

  1. The water filters we were having changed out twice a month weren’t cutting it
  2. We need a more permanent solution for our water – which we’re still trying to fix
  3. The rust will clog up the drip lines for the garden, so unless we can get the rust out, we can’t use our well water for the garden

Rotten eggs

Yep, you guessed it, or maybe you haven’t, but this is another paragraph on our well water.

Don’t you just love the way you smell right after stepping out of the shower? Like lavender soap, rosemary shampoo, and maybe even rain. But definitely not rotten eggs, right?

Well, that’s how WE smell when we get out of the shower. Like rotten eggs. In fact, that’s how our entire house smells when we shower. Which doesn’t bode well for the girl with the sensitive smeller (e.g. me).

Now imagine you’re about to take a big gulp of ice cold water and just as you do you catch a big whiff of, what was that, oh yeah, rotten eggs. Yum!

That’s my life people. And I’m okay with it, for now, but gosh darn we better get this water thing figured out soon.

Lesson learned:

  1. The water softener we got just ain’t cutting it

This is just the start of all the fun things we’re adjusting to out here in the country. Stay tuned for more.

To Be Continued…