Adulting is hard

The car went into the shop for some tune up work, and came out with a bill amounting to two grand.  It is ok.  It is almost 7 years old and has upwards of 100,000 miles on it.  It was due for a new timing belt, and all the maintenance that comes with that.  So we listed the old little red toyota truck for sale.  The one I bought partway through college, that saw us through the year without electricity and the year with electricity at the cabin.  That Raif has been using to haul firewood.  That first Griffin, then Misha, and also Sabine, were largely raised in.  Serving as a mobile kennel for husky pups resulted in an absolutely trashed interior.  But it has a buyer!  It is going to a dog-friendly home of friends.

And we listed the dryer for sale.  It may also have a buyer.  I wish we had gone straight to the propane dryer we have now and skipped the fancy electric one that cost us more than a thousand dollars in generator/off grid power system repairs this past winter.  Lessons learned.

Its funny.  The finances of it all stress me out.  Finances always stress me out when they are tight.  But this time, I'm feeling more able to ride it out with equanimity.  After so long with major systems of this house dysfunctional - water, electricity - even though the time of that dysfunction is fading a bit into the past, I'm keenly aware of all that we have.  I'm so grateful every time I take a shower or run a load of laundry.  Even if it has been days since I've showered and even if Avery screams the entire time, wishing mama were not hidden behind the shower curtain.  Even if I feel as though the bathroom is drowning in piles of dirty laundry.  A couple weeks without a second vehicle, a couple weeks of waking myself and my baby at 6 am in order to get to town with Raif so that we can keep an afternoon commitment seems manageable.  The back of the Joy of Cooking that sits on the cookbook shelf in my kitchen has this quote on the back: "Every kitchen should have running water, a stove and a copy of the JOY" - Saveur.  I am amused every time I glance at it.  It speaks to so much privilege.  Running water is a luxury.  One I am so grateful to have.  Avery is too, she LOVES baths.  She splashes and kicks and giggles.

I finished a thing I started many years ago.  I plaited the warp threads and hung it on river driftwood from the Tanana.  I adorned it with bone and stones and beads from jewelry no one wears anymore.  Mounted on the wall, it will bring goddess energy to someone's home.  There is something incredibly satisfying, oh so liberating, to finish things that have been languishing in the back of my mind, at the bottom of my project list, for so long.  There are more languishing projects waiting for me.  I'm looking forward to releasing them into the world.

Avery cries, suddenly and with passion, every time I go out of her line of sight.  She is not a huge fan of mama working - and this weekend is a marathon of weaving work under a tight deadline - so we are learning to negotiate between her needs for closeness and attention and the very real need for me to do the meticulous and time consuming work of weaving that helps to pay the bills.  She's a little monkey, clinging to me, reaching out from the safety that I am to her to touch the world.