Hard Times - Shmard Times

This is a long one and a late one, but maybe after reading it you’ll forgive me or at least feel sorry for me (I would much prefer forgiveness).  Also, I’ll tell you about “the chainsaw incident”.

I’ve heard a nasty rumor that building a house can be extremely difficult on a family, what with our 1 & 4 year olds not being able to pull their weight and at least help clear a tree or two.  Maybe there is a reason they don’t make junior sized chainsaws.  Anyway, building a house is hard, so they say.  Things don’t always go as planned, expenses always seem to grow as you go, and more doom and gloom.  I mean, we are two relatively intelligent adults.  We get it.  Such a big project with two young boys is bound to have a rough day or 20!  But I refer back to our naivety that I call optimism.  Anytime “hard times” are mentioned in reference to our decisions to chase this particular dream, we shrug and say “Psshhhhhh!  Don’t you know we can do anything?!”  The point is, of course it’s hard, but it is worth it.  I guess what I’m getting at is that we are seeing some of these “hard times” but they are not what they seem.

When we finally moved down here it was pretty dang easy as far as moving to a new state goes.  See, we had an accepted offer on our Indiana house 9 days after we listed it (I like to say that even though the closing was postponed again and again, and it still took a while, the offer made us feel warm fuzzies inside)!  THEN, we found our Little Slice of Heaven on our third day out looking at properties.  Just like that!  BOOM!  BOOM!  Check and check!  House sold, property bought!  Let’s go!  (Shout out to the real estate agents, you rock!)  While we did ride this roller coaster all the way to the top of those good times, we knew it wouldn’t always be that easy.

So eventually came a hard day.  One day we were blazing a trail up a hill to put up a fence.  Jon was in front cutting the bigger trees with the chainsaw (duhn duhn DUUUUUHHHHNNNN) and I followed behind clearing the small stuff.  When Jon got to a clearing I heard the chainsaw tap something that was decidedly NOT wood.  That wasn’t alarming until I heard a slight grunt from Jon.  Yes, the chainsaw “tapped” Jon!  I wasn’t sure if I would look up and see Jon standing on one leg with the other leg in his hand, or just that the saw was stuck in a tree trunk.  Jon is THAT good at hiding it when he’s been hurt.  I’ve been with him for 15 years and I couldn’t tell the difference.  (Let’s just assume it doesn’t mean I’m that oblivious.)  Anyway, he was still standing on two legs, and all other appendages seemed to be intact, but there was a fresh hole torn in his jeans at the knee.  I knew it got more than his jeans when Jon asked me to come grab the saw and maybe we should go to the hospital.  When Jon says “maybe we should go to the hospital” it means “we need to get to a hospital NOW!”  Thank God my in-laws were there and they headed for a Burger King with a play area with the boys, and we went on to learn exactly how long the drive is from our future home to the nearest hospital, a handy piece of information in our family.

For those with a strong stomach here are a couple photos.  If you do not have a strong stomach, DO NOT look at these photos!!!  It’s not horrendous, but I don’t want to lose any readers because I induce vomiting or anything!

Seriously!  Please don’t get sick.  I’ll feel really bad!

The before and after really don’t look that different, do they?

Is it weird that I still think my hubby looks hot in this photo?  Show me dem legs!!  Ew, but not that one!

After x-rays and 20 stitches it turned out he cut himself directly over his knee cap but managed to do no damage to tendons or bones, only the flesh…  be it a lot of flesh, he was lucky.  THANK GOD!!  That was a rough day, especially for Jon.

Since then most of our problems have been related to things breaking down….to be more accurate, EVERYTHING breaking down.  This includes our truck, car, backhoe, tractor, and 4-wheeler.  At one point we literally did not have ANYTHING with wheels that ran.  So we bought an extra farm truck, complete with 4 wheel drive (now we can finally make it up our driveway!).  Then guess what…  That’s right, THAT broke down…  TWICE!  Thankfully Jon is a genius, as I’ve said before and has been able to quickly get the tractor and backhoe back in commission.  When the vacuum pump went out in the truck, he limped it into town and raced the clock as O’Reilly’s prepared to close for the night.  I think it was right at 60 minutes from the time the vacuum pump failed till Jon had the truck running again!  Like I said, the man is a genius or at the very least has magical powers!  Jon even got the 4-wheeler running, and will have the farm truck running back up the House Hill by this weekend!  We suspected the car needed a transmission rebuild, but an honest mechanic changed the torque converter (a much cheaper fix) and we had no problems with the car during our weeklong road trip last week!  Thank you, Mr. Honest Mechanic!  Today our farm fleet is doing much better.

Something important that I’ve been reminded of the past couple of weeks through these “hard times” is that as bad as these difficulties seem, it’s really not that bad.  In fact, it’s still pretty amazing.  We are reenergized every day when we step foot on the “House Hill” and stand where the porch will be and take a quick look at what we will wake up to… someday.  The boys are enjoying this dream as well.  When I put Willie down to bed I ask him every night, “What are you going to dream about tonight?”  My favorite answer is, “I’m going to dream about when we live at the Homestead all the time and we can play there all the time!”  This is one of those times I feel like we’re doing something right.  Even without a home or a single running engine on the property, we have an amazing thing to share together as a family…   and hopefully with many of you who will surely come visit!  Don’t worry; you don’t have to come visit until after we have running water and power, and probably a functioning bathroom.

Finally, I said I would work on a name for our place.  I haven’t gotten very far, but feel free to leave your suggestions (please).  We’ll address this again next time, as well as our adventures in installing our own septic system, and what happens when a dump truck driver lacking in skill attempts to deliver 26 tons of gravel via the barely passable driveway…  but there are good times to report as well!