A moving moment!

Well, this post will probably be the last before we officially become Oregonians. The house is packed up and while we have about 100 things to do before we leave in a day or two, we feel like we have things in hand.  Accounts are closed, new ones are being opened up, and we're readying ourselves for a 14 hour drive with our five chickens, two doves, one pigeon, one cat and one dog. 

The house looks a little forlorn right now, as most homes do when they're getting ready to be unoccupied. No worries though, if all goes well and escrow closes as it should, there should be new people here to love it soon.

For us, it will be nice to arrive, and even nicer when our furniture arrives a day after that. And of course there's internet to be installed and satellite TV to go up, because it's the last season of "The Americans," and I can't miss a single episode. Priorities.

People have asked if I'm sad to be leaving either the area or our house, but I am not one of those people who minds moving, as long as I have plenty of notice and help and I'm going somewhere I want to go. So while it's a little bittersweet, the sweet is the prevailing flavor -- right now, anyway. 

We did have a serious hiccup yesterday though. Our packers arrived and proceeded to work much slower than our moving coordinator had estimated, leaving us holding the bag with about 50 boxes to pack ourselves, after he mistakenly told us the ladies could have us packed up in about six hours. Nope. But we're not afraid of hard work. 50 boxes later, mission accomplished. 

Nice to know I can out-pack a trio of 20-something girls though, even at my age. If homesteading gives you nothing else, it will absolutely give you endurance (and very strong arms). 

I'll post as soon as I'm able from the great Pacific Northwest! If you are the praying sort, say a prayer as we travel, and if you're a "sending positive vibes" kind of person, those would be welcome, too! 

The virtual home

View from the driveway

One of the hardest parts about this move is that, while I've visited Oregon and feel pretty confident and happy about the state we are moving to, I have never once been in the home we'll be living in. Usually when you move, part of moving out of your current place is feeling the excitement and anticipation of where you are moving into. But if you've never seen it, it's basically a big, yawning chasm looming ahead of you with a sign hanging over it which says, "I'm sure it will be just fine. Really. I hope." 

Luckily, Big Ag is in Oregon this week for some meetings, and so he went over to the house yesterday afternoon and we Skyped together, him on his phone and me here on my desktop. Together we "walked" through the entire house, looking in cupboards, seeing the view through the windows, and discussing furniture placement. It was gorgeous day with a partly cloudy sky and the sun just setting, and so of course the whole property was bathed in beautiful light and looked warm and welcoming. The inside of the house itself looked friendly and inviting, with just enough projects to keep us busy without major projects that would be a headache.

Doing this virtual walk-through lowered my anxiety levels by about 80 percent. Many of us complain about the hassle our virtually-connected world brings us, but with it come incredible advantages, like being able to tour your new home, real time, from the comfort of the one you're selling.

The home we're moving into has been empty for a couple of years, and definitely looks it. I just finished a novel where one of the characters says, "a home needs to have people living in it to be happy." Looking around at this vacant house, I can see that's true. Something goes out of a place when people no longer occupy it. It can be clean, it can be structurally sound, but it just feels lonely. 

So maybe in making a happy home, we'll also be making a home happy. That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

Big Ag met these "neighbors" walking in the road yesterday.

Breaking up is hard to do

So over the last six years, I've made one really close friend in the neighborhood. A lady who, like me, arrived here in 2012 knowing almost no one. We met through the regular block parties we have out here, two transplants in a sea of old timers, and hit it right off. We're both animal lovers, both slightly aggravated by our spouses (only on rare occasions, of course!), and both enjoy a giggle and cup of coffee.

And while nothing has transpired that would have precipitated it (that I can figure out, anyway) she has apparently dumped me. She sent me a nice note saying she'd love to have one last visit at my house before I put it on the market and when I sent her back an enthusiastic assent, with some tentative dates and times. I got back ... crickets. Radio silence. Nothing.

I've left her a couple of other messages, one asking her again if she wanted to get together, and another one to see if she wanted some eggs, and got the same resounding silence in return. So at this point, I'm backing off.

I'm 99 percent sure it's nothing I've said, so I'm wondering if maybe for some people goodbyes are just too hard and so they pull away before the moment comes. Other neighbors who have talked to her say she's in apparent good health, but I guess at our age you never really know about that.

But as we're getting closer to leaving, I am finding some friends drawing closer and some definitely starting to pull away. My neighbor is just an extreme example of the latter, I guess. You know this sort of thing happens during huge life changes, but it often surprises you which camp people end up falling into. Luckily I think in the days of Facebook and frequent travel, most friends do stay in touch in some form.

But for others, that's not the case. I guess breaking up is hard to do even if you're just friends or neighbors.

Guns and Rabbits

This morning when I woke up there was a turkey buzzard sitting on one of our fenceposts with a dead rabbit in its feet. We've had the pleasure of seeing a few little cottontails around these last several weeks (they are very cute in small numbers), which is unusual. In the six years since we moved here, we've only seen an occasional jackrabbit as far as the species leporidae is concerned. The gully-washing rains of last year resulted in increased fecundity in a lot of smaller rodents, however, and so this year we're seeing more of everything -- more gophers, field mice, and of course rabbits.

But seeing the dead rabbit got me thinking about rabbits in general, who are predators to nothing except grass (and occasionally, irrigation lines), but prey to almost everything else.  And it's just a fact of life that the better predator you are, the less likely you are to be prey. Bears and mountain lions need fear nothing except man. Rabbits need to fear everything, up to and including man.

So then it occurred to me ... what if the 2nd Amendment extremists -- the assault rifle collectors, bump stock advocates, and guys who hold fast to their ability to kill 300 people in less than five minutes -- are merely responding to some primitive instinct that tells them that the better predators they are, the less likely they are to be prey? In other words, for those of us who favor sensible gun control, what if we're not fighting a constitutional interpretation as much as a primitive survival instinct?

I mean, obviously, if cottontails could arm themselves, they probably would, as would any prey animal. You are less likely to be killed if you are capable of killing your predator. Strikes are mitigated on the ability to preemptively strike and/or counterstrike against your opponent, whether in the wild, on the battlefield, or in the business world. It's how the planet works.

My point is that if we're arguing against survival instinct, however much exaggerated and extreme it is, we're going to be in for an uphill battle all the way and even beyond that. It doesn't make me hopeful for the long-term progress of taking AR-15's out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them. And the angry, vitriolic response we get when we try and push this agenda forward is coming from people who are fearful above anything else..."if I don't have this, I will be the prey and not the predator." This from a group of people who already feel (justly or not) that there is a mandate to eliminate their way of life. 

How do you argue against survival instinct, however irrational and misplaced it is? Because let's face it, the odds are far greater that your AR-15 will be stolen from you in a burglary, or lifted by a family member who hears voices in their heads than it will be used to successfully defend yourself. The statistics on that one don't lie.

But in some mindsets, people see themselves as cottontails, rather than the bears we actually are in the world of predator and prey.