Project Status Update

It’s been a while.  We’ve been a little busy…

Project Cabin is not far from finished, but we had quickly outgrown the “bed” in the Cramper, a bed which earns its quotational glyphs by being, fundamentally, a thirty-year-old piece of foam. Like just about everything in the Cramper, it was designed to be towed to the State Park and used a couple of weekends a year, not continually abused for three years. Especially when the abuse had grown proportionally with the weight of one occupant during the last eight months of those years. And so, the cabin may be unfinished, but the upstairs was in good enough shape, and we were sleep-deprived enough, to break it in by dragging a mattress and bedding to the upstairs floor.

In anticipation of our first night in this, the place we’d built ourselves, we also brought the grill and some freshly picked fiddleheads with the intent of a nice romantic rustic dinner to go with our dormroom-bedding arrangement. Of course, we didn’t learn until later, when we were up all night taking turns running outside to expel noxious bodily waste in whatever way we could, that fiddleheads are not meant to be grilled, but boiled or steamed to release their toxins. And so was the first night in our new place.

It’s a couple of months since, and we’ve recovered well. We’ve also completed the relocation, including a modest kitchen allowing us to prepare foods in ways to minimize the chances of poisoning ourselves.

The other big project we’ve been working on has also seen progress. Introducing Our Squirrel.

She fits in perfectly here even with these abnormally long toes, and as far as we can tell, is a perfectly functional small human creature, in spite of the fact that I incurred the following mishaps during her long gestation (list is abridged):

— slipped on a sheet of ice and fell hard the day after receiving a Big Scary Needle Test (a test that comes with a sheet of paper instructing those to whom it is administered to “take it easy” for the few days after)
— slid 50 feet down the mountain, also icy, when the snowshoes didn’t cinch, stopping hard and fast with a snowshoed foot to a tree.
— landed a snowmobile – hard – into a ditch
— tripped and fell backwards on top of a tile saw while trying to help haul the oven into the cabin, followed by the oven, which landed on top of me
— nearly poisoned myself by eating undercooked foraged food.

Poison Control’s number is now in my phone. I’m not sure how much that will help.