dizzy land and the purple martins

ahh sweet simplicity. while tiff and stella have been in disneyland, i've realized that moving from a house to a trailer was an idea in the right direction, but too hesitant of a step. if we are truly going to simplify our lives then we are going to have to eliminate all traces of materialism from our living situation. so in that spirit, i bring you pictures of our new home- the big rock.
we been living next to the big rock for two and a half weeks now and are enjoying the lack of clutter. when it rains we bathe and what we catch in the river is what we eat, sometimes catfish or bass, sometimes a full can of beer or a package of hot dogs. here, tiffany is showing ryan and leslie our new table that we pushed over this afternoon. we've been trying shop locally and we only give stella toy rocks from within 10 feet of where we live and only if they're in season.
stella has responded amazingly to this change. tiffany and i have always been believers in an organic approach to sustainable parenting and letting stella discover the joys of foraging for crawdads has been as fullfilling as it has been tasty. here you see her crawling into her bed wearing pajamas that we wove from an old tarp and some bunjee cords that washed up in our living room.


the thing we're coming to realize is how little we really need. here's a picture of stella sharing the family cup with ryan, showing that she considers him a part of our family. we were too busy living in the moment to take pictures as our two families settled in to our rocks for the evening, watched the sun set, and passed the family cup of fresh local-made fair trade river water.

(i don't know if i've been listening to too much bluegrass or reading to many children's books, but i've had this in my head for days; a tribute to my bouncy dog)

in for a penny,
in for a pound
my dog jumps up...
but she don't come down

whats up with a pup that gets down and falls up?

three white paws
and one that's brown
cuz she's three parts rabbit
and one part hound

whats up with a pup that gets down and falls up?

i can't walk her around
if she don't touch the ground
i can't reach her to spank her
without a leash or an anchor

whats up with a pup that gets down and falls up?

for anybody that's actually tuning into this for an account of our family adventure in the trailer, tiff and stella are in disneyland and nala and i are in the trailer in winchester so adventure is fairly minimal right now. the rain has reactivated sasha rottenweiler's skunk smell so i'm loving the electric fan. aromatherapy it ain't.

whiskey, tobacco, horse-racing and caves...kentucky has every kind of way of getting lost. the surest way to lose your footing in the bluegrass though, is by admiring the scenery so much you wander off the trail and into a bit of adventure. look up or down, there's curiosities enough to kill a trailer's worth of cats. we've been living at gainesway farm thanks to our association with the king of trees, and his fiefdom is a wonder.
We made it to Bee Rock (clearly named to instill a patient mindset) for some two-trailer, three-baby camping and playing in the river. The psychiatrist and i saw a baby deer swim a rapid to escape a hound dog. The king of trees and i tried to paddle a tandem kayak with our hands instead of walking back for the forgotten paddles, ending up shipwrecked in knee deep mud and weeds. The hairless chimps all chased each other around the picnic table and tried to eat rocks.
I woke up in the trailer early in the morning of my birthday to full nose fog of skunk: the vents on the trailer managing to serve as some sort of concentrating device for the olfactory insult. a can full of skunk is a tough place to live. poor Sasha Rottenweiler was the most wounded by the skunks opinion; vigorously scrubbed with a bottle of coconut shampoo, she now smells like some kind of tropical fart.
some thoughts on living in the trailer
1) sleeping with fresh air every night is awesome. skunks and diaper pails are the enemy.
2) tidiness is vital.
3)the "swiffer" is pretty handy but when i think of saying "i just swiffered my trailer", i blush.
4) we like getting the feel of new places.

photo: cool overgrown cemetery on gainesway farm.

wolf whiskers

If moon worshippers are lunatics, then tiffany and I are in for a second degree moonburn and a trip to the luny bin. Our idolatry of the battered satellite comes not by choice, but by admitting the obvious and inescapable truth that we are addicted to moonbeams. After having met, married, conceived and birthed a child under full moons we have given up and decided to accept our lunar tendencies. For the suntanned nocturnal folks out, keep your eyes on all that waxing and waning going on up there, it might be important. I say a moonth is a better measure of time than a month and it's worth setting your watch back a moonbeam or two. Solar power may be the answer to our oil depency, but if we're ever going to cure our addiction to normalcy, Obama's gonna need to throw a few dollars at lunar power. This waxing moon will be Stella's 13th and will be her lunar birthday (mine too) and the end of her first year finds us living in a trailer and bouncing around between campgrounds and guest bedrooms.


Cheers to Ryan, Leslie, and Crazy C who paid to come camp with us at the horse park. They left the prettiest horse farm in kentucky to come camp next to the basketball court with us and for this we are firmly convinced of their friendship. The horse park initially seemed like a good choice due to its proximity to Spindletop; living in a trailer park and swimming at the country club fulfilled a kentucky-bred dream of mine, but in retrospect the outdoor mall scene left a little to be desired.
Currently we are cozily ensconced at my parents place in Indiana. Last night we watched the firefly disco in their front field and this morning we had eggs that were laid yesterday, homemade biscuits, and jam made from strawberries picked last week.