Starting on a good note: I went swimming in the lake! For more than a minute! On Saturday morning I drove (yes, still scared of overdoing it) to Speedboat Beach and pulled my wetsuit on, splashed in, and paddled about for maybe 15 minutes. With lots of resting on boulders to make sure I didn't push it too hard, but it's the most consistent exercise I've gotten all summer aside from walking. Another totally awesome thing that happened last week was that I finally got to do a fun little trailside emergency bike maintenance clinic with some ladies from SheJumps! Lindsay Currier found time to leave her busy homesteading to come up and help me, and Meghan Kelly the SheJumps coordinator for California made it up from south shore with some goodies to pass out. The group totaled around 10 women and we covered a variety of topics from fixing a flat tire to adjusting brakes and shifting and remedies for broken chains/derailleurs. It was so much fun that we're planning on holding another one at the Tahoe Fat Tire Festival on September 14, so tell your friends/girlfriends/wives and anybody else who might possibly be interested in learning a few very useful things about trailside emergency repairs.
 |
| Fixing bikes with SheJumps |
Now, had anyone asked me what I thought I'd be doing now a month ago, it sure would not have included making important life decisions about our current and future housing dilemma. It would have more likely been somewhere along the lines of: more relaxing camping trips, hammock snoozing, lots of yoga, and hopefully some swimming and paddling. Probably more gardening and chicken watching as well. And had I not been recovering from an injury, I would have been out racing bikes around the country while Kit was at home alone dealing with this messy situation. Not cool. So everything works out in its own crazy way, and among all of the turmoil my brain is actually feeling good enough to not really notice it any more!
 |
| First cherry tomatoes! |
After continuing the round-and-round debate between cheaper Kings Beach fixer-upper, nicer Truckee house, and buildable land in either location, now we're going back around to the little cabin we looked at in the very beginning, wondering if it might not be such a bad idea after all...assuming a few key additions would be doable according to Tahoe building regulations and also not prohibitively expensive for permitting and building. If we could get the price down enough it might even be affordable to hire some friends to help with the remodel/addition process and bust it out much faster. More decisions... AAAHHHHHHHH!!!! What if I just want to live in a van, ride bikes, and climb rocks for a while? It's undeniably stressful to be considering a step into the unknown (or in this case partially known) direction; having already been through one remodel it is not at all on my list of favorite things to do, nor is it on Kit's. It could be so worth it in the end, but I just can't get excited about sacrificing yet another summer of riding bikes and having fun, especially after going through this particularly lame summer. We'll just have to continue the wait and see game, sell the house, and hope something good pops up on the housing market here if the logistics or motivation don't work out quite right for the cabin.
 |
| Jamming out! |
In the meantime, not knowing exactly how much longer we'll be in this house, I've been canning pickles and jam like a crazy person in an attempt to utilize my amazing kitchen to the fullest while I have access to it. This has really set the bar high for any future kitchen I will use, having 13 feet of counter space to make enormous messes on and yet everything within reach in a couple of steps. The industrial hood fan keeps the whole house from smelling like bacon or dog food, and I LOVE my antique stove! It really has become my dream kitchen, in my dream house, and it's really so sad that things aren't working out here for having more outdoor space here. The lack of sun on this house has also bothered Kit since he got it, and his next place he is determined to have good enough sun exposure to set up a nice solar heating/power system to offset bills and be more reliant on renewable energy sources...goodbye to winter power outages! Back to the canning projects, I think I'll take on some peaches or other fruit next for winter dessert goodness, and plan to tackle some tomatoes and tomato sauce soon as well. Even if I don't put up quite enough to live on all winter, at least it will mean one less trip to the store for a last-minute pizza or pasta night and putting all this spare time to use while I'm hiding from the smoke and tourist mayhem outside.
