In which bodily harm comes to us all, and yet we persevere

This month has been rough on my lungs. And my legs. And my nostrils. And my wallet. And pretty much everyone else too.

Dad and I are both in the last stages of a weird cold/throat thing. It's been tough to shake, but we are trying to carry forward. At last, all I have to do is hock loogies and blow my nose occasionally, and it's all good. But there were some weeks where we got very little done. That's why this post is belated. There wasn't much to say until now. Also, my brother Trent got out of the Navy at the end of July and bought a large piece of property in southern Alabama, so Dad has been down with him several times to walk the property and get the lay of the land. I've told Trent he has to wait on building his house until mine is done because sharing Dad is too difficult. Thankfully, I am older, so he has to obey me.

Here are the current tiny house updates, with useful headings in bold so you know what to expect.

Insulating the Ceiling

Insulation is some tricky stuff. I had never worked with it before, and only had vague memories of Dad telling us not to touch the fluffy pink stuff that poked out of the corners of the attic in my parents' house. He told us it would get inside our skin and cut us and make us itch terribly, which, obviously, terrorized me. To this day, I still get a wave of apprehension whenever I think about eating cotton candy. Nowadays, insulation is brown instead of candy pink, but it's no less cuddly-looking. It looks like sheep fluff, and I want curl up in it and give it a hug. However, its real properties are much less friendly. It's heavy and bulky, and made of tiny tubes of glass, and they will indeed creep into your lungs and imbed themselves in your skin, and there's almost nothing you can do about it. You just have to suck it up (and try not to suck it up your nose).

After wrestling with the whole roll of insulation at once, straining to hold it over our heads while one of us stapled the sides of it into the ceiling braces, Dad got the idea to cut the roll into smaller, more manageable pieces, tie them up into garbage bags, and staple the bags up one by one. It was a genius idea, and while it did take a bit longer, it saved our backs and arms.

Watermelon-cutting knives can also be insulation-cutting knives.

It took several days, but we finally got it all up! Jane and I were itching and coughing for days, but I'll be warm in the winter!

Garbage bags stapled to my ceiling

Installing a Corrugated Steel Ceiling

At the Tiny House Roadshow, one of the houses that I liked the most had a shiny metal ceiling inside, and I just loved the way it looked. I had already been inadvertently going for a mixed-metal look in my own house, and corrugated steel seemed like it would fit right in with my aesthetic. So Dad and I took the truck to Lowe's (probably the 20th time we've been there since starting this project) and loaded up the back with 19 sheets of the stuff. Neither Dad nor I being extremely good at math, we had somehow both come up with the same number of sheets we would need in our separate calculations, so that's what we went with. And MAGICALLY, that's exactly the number of sheets we wound up needing!

The ceiling installation is the most difficult and time-consuming project we've attempted so far. It was really hard work, very taxing on the old arm and back muscles. Thankfully we had Jane and Mom to help us a couple of times (six hands are vastly better than four when it comes to holding 40 pounds of razor-sharp steel over your head). We only sliced ourselves a couple of times, and I left a little dried blood on one sheet as a testament to our hard work (honestly, it had dried before I noticed it and I'll scrub it off later). After days of back-breaking work, the ceiling is done! And it is so beautiful! It really brightens up the house with all the light bouncing off it from various sources. I am so glad I went with corrugated steel!

Electrical Work Continues

I wonder what percentage of my paycheck goes directly to Lowe's every month. It's got to be an unusally large chunk, because I find myself there several times a week, loading up on this and that. This week, it's been lights. Living room lights, kitchen lights, bathroom lights, laundry closet lights. At this point, I am well lit.

For the living room, I found some really cool track lighting that looks like little spotlights. Track lighting is something I've never worked with before, and I love how easy it is to change out the lights or add more if you want. I was originally going to put five of them across my living room, but they are so bright that four seems to already be pushing it. I got two pendant lamps for the kitchen that remind me of an industrial restaurant kitchen, in order to inspire me to cook better and more often. I am not so very hopeful that a light fixture will improve my somewhat abysmal kitchen skills, but it can't hurt. I got the cheapest light fixture for the laundry closet since nobody will see it. And the bathroom lights are sort of like clear wavy lampshades that will be suspended over the mirror, on a wall that has yet to be built.

I wanted Dad to take a picture of me wiring some light switches, but he wasn't sure it was entirely legal for me to be doing that, so you'll have to use your imagination. Picture me looking very tough and cool and serious while using a pocket knife to strip the insulation off some big wires, and you'll get it. I'm pretty badass like that.

Dad got jolted while wiring up the track lighting's power box. It was funny but also a bit scary. He actually said, "Yow." Now I know that even though the switch is off, power is still running through the black wires. I do enjoy hands-on learning most, but that's one lesson I'm content to learn vicariously.

Soap-Making Side Project

In an attempt to be more pioneery and homesteadly, my sister, Jane, and I went up to Huntsville a couple of weeks ago to learn how to make soap with DeAnna, one of Jane's good friends. DeAnna started making soap awhile back and offered to teach us and let us make a couple of loafs with her. Soap loaves. Loafs or loaves? Spellcheck says they are both right. "Loafs" seems more friendly, so I'll use that one.

DeAnna graciously had everything ready to go when we got there, and used a soap-making website which told her what quantities of each ingredient (various oils, fragrance, and lye) we needed for each loaf of soap. Everything had to be weighed and measured and mixed with the utmost care, especially the lye. It comes in a plastic bottle in little white flakes (a nice, clean version of what our grandmothers had to use, which I think was ashes from a wood-burning stove), and I had to stir constantly while pouring the flakes over a bowl of cold water, sitting in a second bowl of ice, to cool it down since it gets really hot while it dissolves. Apparently, if you do it the other way around, and pour water over the flakes, it could explode. Which would have been awesome, of course, but DeAnna would probably get mad and never invite us over to make soap again. I did accidentally splash soap mix into her and Jane's faces twice, so I'm already on shaky ground for a return visit. Jane was less careful with her face mask and probably inhaled many more lye fumes than I did. She seems pretty happy about it.

We made two loafs, one gardenia-scented with a lovely lavender hue, and one infused with coffee. We used real coffee grounds in addition to the espresso fragrance and the coffee butter that was part of the actual recipe. After mixing all the various ingredients together and achieving ideal thickness, we poured the soap mix into two frames that DeAnna's very handy husband had made, and that Jane had earlier taped off with wax paper. We did some color layering to make the soap pretty. And indeed, it worked!

Just after pouring

They look delicious.

 DeAnna let the loafs sit for a couple of weeks, and then she sliced them up and sent us the pictures. They'll continue to harden for a couple more weeks, and then they'll be ready to use!

Chicken Update

My chickens are all still alive. This is a happy success, since I've heard tell that chickens are notorious for getting themselves murdered by various wildlife. I've started letting them wander around outside their pen a bit so that they can scratch around in the yard and find some delicious bugs to eat. Clyde is always very alert when they are out, and maintains a close watch on the immediate area while his harem chows down. Little Dennis (Denise? We'll find out later, I guess) has gotten very flappy and hoppy and powers around like he has a bottle rocket strapped to his back. Any time anyone looks like they've found something interesting in the dirt, he darts under their heads to snatch it away. I can't fault him for being intrepid, but he's kind of a little jerk.

The hens are laying one egg every couple of days. I was worried that they were still feeling very stressed from the move or something was bothering them at night, but Mr. Gerry, who gave me the chickens, said that in this extreme heat, chickens naturally won't lay as much. But I am enjoying the few they give me! I did a taste test to compare my chickens' eggs with a store-bought eggs, and, undeniably, my eggs somehow have more taste. Or maybe I'm biased.

The State of My Legs

I've always liked to think of myself as a rough-and-tumble kind of girl, but if you were to look at my uncovered legs right now, you might think I'd gotten into some heavy meth usage, because buddy, they are terrifying. Mosquito bites, poison ivy, scrapes from sticks and concrete blocks, and bruises from falling down the folding ladder multiple times have made me tuck away all my shorts for next year, a bit early considering we're still experiencing 90 degree days. And what's more, in my quest to become more green, I cast away the notion of plastic disposable razors and bought a shiny, silver, old-fashioned safety razor. As pretty as it is, and as smug as I feel about being earth-friendly, the only thing I have used it for thus far is to carve multiple ruts and divots into my legs, on top of all the other shit going on down there. The razor also neatly slices off any scab that may be trying to aid in my leg healing from the other stuff. So the legs are a raw, bloody mess. I'm going full ape-woman for the rest of the year. Maybe I will try again later with that razor in the distant future after my leper look fades. It's a damn sexy razor, for truth. I will not give up on it.