It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Week

I've mentioned before that we're in the process of building a new house in the (kind of) country. We'll soon be living in the middle of seven acres of tall trees, short ferns, and all the critters that call them home. We're anxious to share this space with the turkeys, deer, snakes, rabbits, hawks, beavers,  and other more secretive animals we've yet to see.

While the house isn't ready just yet we've been out there working hard this summer. The first thing we did was to build a fire ring. The boys and I spent the good part of an afternoon collecting the stones to frame the pit. It's big. Real big. When the lot was cleared we asked the workers to haul a log over to the fire ring. We can't wait for the cool weather of fall and winter.

We've been working on another project as well - a trail leading to the 15-acre lake at the back of our property. The trail is about two hundred steps (I'm estimating this to be somewhere in the area of a tenth of a mile). We're using the thousands of rocks that are scattered throughout the property to establish the trail until it meets the creek. At the creek we've set some boards down temporarily but will soon be constructing a small 14-foot bridge.

And while we're hard at work so are the builders. At least most days. There are some frustrating days when no one is out there working and nothing changes. At this point they still need to finish the screen porch on the back, paint the walls, install the floors, hook up the air conditioners, bring in the septic system, put in the stone that will skirt the front, and take care of all the finishing details. That's a lot. We were hoping they'd be finished already but it's looking like we'll have to wait until mid-August - around the time school will be starting.

To make things more interesting we have to be out of our current house this Friday. Having no home, the girls are all headed to St. Louis to visit family and friends and the boys and I will spend the week walking in the North Carolina woods. I'm usually not one to get stressed by much but this week has tested me. Tricia and I have spent the past few days packing, loading, cleaning, making phone calls to utility companies, packing for our trips, attending a party, retooling our budget, arranging for a temporary home when we return, screening incoming kindergartners, mowing the lawn, trying to get nail polish out of the carpet, and driving Harper to the upstate for Girl Scout camp. There have been days when I feel like we've worked nearly all day long and nothing looks any different than when we first started. Fortunately, we're nearing the end of the week and everything is just about in place.

I spent this afternoon getting the food prepared for our seven-day hike. This will be the longest trip we've ever taken on the Appalachian Trail, both in terms of days and distance, and I generally spend about a week or two preparing. This time I've had only a few moments here and there to throw everything together. This includes figuring out our ride to Deep Gap (this is where we left off last trip), securing a ride into Franklin in the middle of the week to resupply, planning out a rough itinerary that ensures the boys will have fun, and getting the food together. Planning seven days worth of food that you can carry on your back is a bit tricky.

We'll be eating oatmeal or Pop-Tarts for breakfast each morning. Lunch will be a lot of homemade beef jerky, peanuts, dehydrated fruits, and Cheez-its. Dinners are a combination of noodles, chili, and spaghetti. A few nights we'll even have pudding for desert. This all seems simple enough but it's really not. I have a binder where I keep recipes I've found on-line over the past year. Having a variety of food that is appetizing is important. We're not quite there just yet but we're getting closer all the time. Muluken looked at the menu I created on the computer and said "We're having noodles TWICE?" Little does he know some backpackers have them every single night for weeks at a time.

When the food is all laid out on the counter is looks like a lot. However, once it is sorted into bags for each day it's looking pretty light. To help keep the boys hiking up all those mountains I add a bag of candy to snack on throughout the day. I'm not sure if the sugar helps but the excitement of leaving our limitations on sweets at home sure does. "Hey, let's stop at the top of this mountain and have another piece of candy!" There are few rules in the mountains. Whatever gets you to the top is fair game.

It is now Wednesday night and I believe we are on the verge of having it all together. The backpacks are packed, the suitcases are full, and we have one-and-a-half days to move out the rest of the furniture. I hope it all gets done. It'll have to.

This will most likely be my last post for a few weeks. I'm not sure when exactly we'll be in our new house and when we'll get the internet access set up. In the meantime we'll finish our hike, "camp out" on the floor of an empty house in our neighborhood, and start school. There should be plenty to write about.

How Do I Kill a String of Thought Provoking Blogposts?

My buddy Tim has a link on his blog for a really clever daily cartoon called "Basic Instructions." Each day you learn from topics such as "How to Be Kind to the Least Among You," "How to Refer to Someone's Not-Spouse," or "How to Recover From a Bad Shave." In all honesty, if you were to take this advice seriously you would quickly find that you have let your appearance go and all but alienated your friends and family.

There's lots of advice and how-to found on the internet. Much of it is very helpful. Just last week I mentioned to Tricia that I wanted a haircut but didn't want an ultra-short cut with the clippers. Not knowing how to give a scissor-cut, I half-jokingly suggested she find a video on You Tube. The next day she told me she found one titled "How to Give Your Man a Haircut." Sure, people go to school to both learn and hone this craft. But after a brief 4-minute video she felt good-to-go. She wrapped an old sheet around my shoulders and began to snip away.

A few days later we were preparing to replace the linoleum floor in the laundry room. After tearing back a few strips and seeing all that glue and paper still stuck to the subfloor we realized we had no idea what we were doing. Again, within minutes we had found and watched a video on the computer that showed us what to do. Seriously, how did mankind ever manage to survive the years before the internet?

I use the internet to find out lots of other things as well. I follow the news, baseball scores, blogs, and trail journals. I learn to play new songs on guitar and find recipes and tips for dehydrating food. I research things I've heard about in conversation, books, or movies. Most recently I researched Community Supported Agriculture - a partnership between consumer and farmer for a given growing season. After learning more about the advantages of knowing the very farm from which our food comes I again used the internet to find a nearby farm that offers Community Supported Agriculture. Within minutes I found Pinckney's Produce in Vance, South Carolina.

Is there anything you can't find on the internet?  I think back to the olden days of encyclopedias and have to laugh at the simplicity of our curiosity and the vast limitations of our ability to quench it. How would we ever have been able to answer such crucial questions as "How do you diffuse a bomb," "How do you howl like a wolf," or "How do you steal your neighbor's wi-fi?"

With so much information at our fingertips, it's hard to understand how we can be portrayed as knowing so much less than the many generations who have come before us. How could that even be true?

I bet I know how I could find out!

Running Out of Gas

A number of years ago I was talking with our neighbor about a growing concern, in the face of a new war in Iraq, that we should begin conserving gas. 

“How are you supposed to save gas?” he asked. “If you have to go to the store to get something for dinner or to pick up a prescription there’s not much you can do. It’s not like we drive around just to drive around.”

The fact that he was in the practice of pouring gasoline into the cracks of his driveway to kill weeds spoke to the fact he was not necessarily concerned with environmental issues. This, obviously, would have been a good place to start but one I chose to overlook at the moment.

“Well, I think the point is you try to combine trips whenever you can,” I argued. “If you need to go to the store and you know you’ll be picking up the kids from school later in the afternoon you could wait and do both in one trip. Or if you have to make a separate trip maybe you wait until you need more than just one or two things. I bet we'd both be surprised to see how much this would save.”

“Yeah…,” he said. “I guess that’s true.” Still, he sounded doubtful. I think he saw this as an imposition. He was not alone.  Many people see conservation as a hassle or an attack on both their freedom and their lifestyle. Many others see conservation as a political issue. 

We've been thinking a lot about conservation and sustainability lately. We're excited to be moving into a house that is 25% smaller than our current house. At 3,000 square feet it is still awfully large but given the fact we have eight people living in our household that puzzles out to only 375 sq ft per person. This is equivalent to a family of four living in a 1,500 sq ft house.

Large houses have become the norm. In 2009 the National Association of Home Builders reported that the average American home was 2,700 sq ft. Considering we average around two children per family that's pretty big. Gone are the 1950s when one bathroom was considered enough and growing boys shared bedrooms. Now days there's an expectation of private bedrooms for the kids and separate bathrooms for everyone - guests included.

I'm in no way arguing for one bathroom. I'm happy our kids have their own bathroom if for no other reason than the fact they are seemingly unable to rinse the sink out after they brush their teeth. But I'm concerned about building bigger houses just because we can. We made this mistake with the house we have now. It was convenient, but not responsible.

So as we prepare for a fresh start in our new house I think about all the shade those trees will provide us in the summer. I think about how nice it will be to sit back off the street, away from the heat absorbing concrete. And I think how great an opportunity this will be to make some changes that will benefit our environment. Changes that require little to no extra money or effort. Here's our plan...

1. Since we will be further from our schools Tricia and I have planned to carpool three times a week. This will save us 3,505 miles of driving over the course of a 36-week school year. We will conserve around 155 gallons of gasoline at a savings of $533 for the year.

2. Since we pass two grocery stores on the way home we'll  plan to stop and do our shopping rather than make a separate  trip (16 miles round trip) later. This will be 648 fewer miles on our engine during the school year and will conserve another 22 gallons of gas. That's a savings of $75. If we also stop to pick up an extra gallon of milk or loaf of bread on the way home (rather than making an extra trip or two each week) we'll save even more.

3. We're buying our own shower heads for the new house. At a cost of only $12 apiece (Niagara 1.5 GPM Massaging Shower at Amazon.com) we will reduce our water usage in the shower from two gallons per minute to one and a half gallons per minute. Seven of us will use these shower heads and will save a total of 16,125 gallons of water each and every year. At a total cost of $24 they will pay for themselves in just a few months while shaving the amount of water we use, reducing our pull on the hot water heater, and decreasing the amount of waste water going back out.

4. We're installing ceiling fans in each bedroom so we can remain comfortable while keeping the thermostat set at 79 degrees during the summer. We do this already at our current house but this time we're buying fans that have light kits attached. Each light requires three bulbs. Counting the fan we'll have on our screened porch there will six in all. That's 18 light bulbs! We're purchasing compact florescent bulbs for each fan as well as for the five can lights in the kitchen and the two lamps we'll use in the living room. That adds up to 25 energy saving bulbs. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, if every US household replaced just one regular incandescent light bulb with a compact florescent light bulb it would prevent 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. That's the equivalent of pulling 7.5 million cars off the road. Replacing light bulbs at this same minimal rate would save enough energy to power 2.5 million homes for an entire year. With our 25 bulbs we'll save the equivalent energy of running ten 100 watt bulbs each day for two hours. Given these bulbs generally cost less than a couple of dollars that's quite an impact.

5.  Six percent of our electricity use goes to washing and drying clothes.The number of tumble dryers has doubled every ten years. In 1981 only 13% of homes had a dryer. By 1991 this had increased to 27%, and in 2001 to 56%. Now, in 2011, 79% of homes in the US have a dryer. After refrigerators, dryers are the second most energy-drawing appliance. But unlike most other appliances there is no real difference, energy-wise, between models. The expensive ones use about the same amount as the cheaper ones. Some do have a feature that senses when clothes are dry and automatically shut-off, thus saving energy and costs. We plan to install clotheslines in our backyard (we're only allowed because our house is not within sight from the road). We generally do about ten loads of laundry each week. If we air dry three or four of these loads, thus avoiding the dryer, we'll reduce the energy-use and costs of running the dryer by 30 - 40%.

6. If we were to catch the rain that falls on our new roof each time an inch of rainfall fell from the clouds we would have 17,000 gallons of water. That is far more water than we could possibly use. However, if we add two more 50-gallon rain barrels to the one we already have (and purchase a small water pump to push it through a hose) we could water our lawn, wash our cars, or watch the kids have a water gun fight. All using 150 gallons of free untreated water. There are now even downspout diverters ($30 at Gardener's Supply Company) that route the rainwater into your barrel until it becomes full and then allow the excess water to continue down the downspout and away from the house. If we used these three barrels only 15 times over the course of an entire year we would save another 2,250 gallons of water.

We have other plans. They include...
*  Using window fans to push out hot air and draw in the cool night air at the beginning and end of summer
*  Buying Smart Power Strips that block power from flowing to electronics that are turned off or "sleeping"
*  Making sure the refrigerator is set between 41-50 and the freezer is set between 23-28
*  Letting dishes air dry rather than using the heated dry
*  Only placing full loads in the dish washer and clothes washer
*  Placing an insulated jacket on the hot water heater (or maybe even see about getting a solar water heater)

Most of these are relatively small and easy changes to make. Some we already do but many we don't. All-in-all I hope to see our power bill show a reduction of 25-30% kilowatt hours and our water usage drop by an even greater percentage.

Living in America, our global footprint is never going to be in harmony with that of the rest of the world. For everyone to live as we do we would need a total of 5.3 earths (you can find out your own number by visiting the Footprint Calculator). We could reduce that even more by eating less meat (one of the most significant changes to be made in terms of energy use when you consider the resources that go into producing and transporting it) or avoiding products that use too much packaging.  But this will have to be gradual. And everyone will have to make their own choices along the way. We saw an interesting documentary called Radical Simplicity that showed how Jim Merkel, engineer and director of Global Living project, works to minimize our impact on the earth and its millions of non-human inhabitants. What stuck with me most, though, was how careful he was to not judge others or pursue courses of action that would force them to comply with drastic changes. He decided, instead, to educate people and trust that they'll make whatever changes they can. That seems like a great place to start.

***Update***

Just a day after writing this post I opened up the newspaper and saw an article about new light bulb standards being set by the government. The article talked about how traditional incandescent bulbs convert about 90% of the energy they consume into heat and only 10% into light. These new standards would require a higher level of efficiency than the classic bulbs could produce, basically forcing them off the shelves over the next two or three years. This would save nearly $6 billion in 2015 alone and, at the consumer level, would save a homeowner somewhere around $50 a year.

While this seems like a no-brainer, some politicians are quite angry. They see this as government sticking their noses into places where they don't belong. Rep. Joe Burton, of Texas, stated "I'm not opposed to the squiggly tailed CFLs." Burton is a leading force against these new standards.  He said that forcing out the old inefficient bulbs "seems to me to be overkill by the federal government." He went on to add "If you are Al Gore and want to spend $10 for a light bulb, more power to you." Just to clarify, these bulbs cost nowhere near $10 and last much longer than the old bulbs.

Representative Michael Burgess, of Texas, said "Now the government wants to tell consumers what type of light bulb they use to read, cook, watch television or light their garage." It seems some, like Burgess, feel it's okay to govern family values but to regulate the efficiency standards of light bulbs is a sign of government going too far.

There are occasionally times when I feel issues are over-simplified by both the media and politicians to create good guys and bad guys in Washington. However, there are many  issues such as this that truly baffle and frustrate me.

Dad and the Girls

I remember when Tricia first became pregnant more than ten years ago everyone assumed I was hoping for a boy. "It doesn't really matter," I'd say. "I'll be happy with either."

I can't say exactly why people would assume this. Is there a general belief that dad's want boys and mom's want girls? If anything, I was probably a bit relieved when I found out we were starting with a girl. I felt I knew what to expect from little boys but a little girl would be something altogether new.

A few years later, while also looking into domestic adoption, Tricia became pregnant again. The question now turned into a statement, "I bet you're hoping for a boy," they'd say. "Otherwise you're going to be surrounded by a house full of women!" Again, I didn't really care. When Ainsley came along I was as thrilled to have two daughters as I would have been to have one of each.

Eight years later, we've since found symmetry - two boys, two girls. It'd be easy to say that parenting boys is different than parenting girls but the fact of the matter is that it's different parenting Harper than it is Ainsley and likewise with both Ty and Muluken. They are all very different, regardless of gender.

One thing that I do notice with the girls is that it's a bit trickier to spend time with them. The boys and I have baseball and backpacking. The girls and I have...well, I 'm not sure. We play games, read books, and wrestle around but I do these same things with the boys as well. I wonder if maybe we shouldn't have something special that's all our own?

A few weeks ago I planned a special day out with the girls. I packed our bikes into the van and told them we were going to head down to the trail that runs along the Congaree River for a bike ride.

"Are there going to be a lot of hills?" Ainsley asked.

"I was going to play at Madeline's," Harper said. "Could you pick me up from there later?" When I did pick her up she didn't necessarily look too happy to be leaving.

Thirty minutes into our ride we already had a bloodied knee, a scraped hand, and a blown out back tire. No one looked to be having any fun at all - with the exception of me as I tried my best to convince them both how much fun this was. We ended the day by taking off our shoes and socks and wading out into the river to rock hop. Being something we do as a family quite often, they giggled as they splashed their way out into the water. While I'm not sure this was enough to make the day all that special, we did at least make it back home without the glum faces.

A few weeks ago I came home to find a big banner the kids had made for my birthday taped to the dining room window. There among the declarations of "I Love You" Harper had written "I Love Backpacking - as long as it's not 80 miles!" I suddenly remembered that I had promised the girls we would go on a backpacking trip together over the summer. I scrambled to put it together.

Backpacking with kids who are not necessarily big fans of heavy packs or doing their business behind a tree is a challenge. It needs to be short. There needs to be water to play in. And the pace needs to be s-l-o-w with plenty of breaks and snacks. I decided to take them to Virginia's Grayson Highlands State Park. We had visited the park for a day trip last summer. GHSP is well-known for the wild ponies that roam the mountains grazing on grass and any other items a nearby hiker may offer. The girls love horses so it seemed like the perfect fit.

We hiked four miles each day and although our only water source turned out to be a dud and I badly sprained an ankle, we had a great time.

Harper measuring out our food for the trip.

The trail was often quite rocky.

This short stretch was nice, soft grass.

There were many rock outcroppings to climb along the way.

A happy hiker.

These were the first of about twenty feral horses we saw.

Ainsley found some flowers for she and I to place in our hair.

Harper logs us in as we head out of the state park and into the National Forest.

A "cave" - the boys will be SO jealous!

Ainsley follows the blazes.

Rocks really kill your feet - and your ankles.

Our destination - Thomas Knob Shelter - was a disappointment. No good water.

We boiled the gross water and backtracked to a nice grassy spot to make camp.

A pretty nice view from the site. Sure beats a crowded campground.

At 60 degrees, the girls were COLD.

Bedtime atop the mountain.

Proof that Harper can, in fact, wake up with a smile on her face!

There were many gates to pass through along the way.

See the white blaze at the top of the wall? Up we climbed.

This was the other side of the that same rock wall.

Excited to be finished. The girls were ready for some indoor plumbing!