I’ve had a hard time with this one. Even to the point where I’m still not sure that I should be making this post, but maybe that’s why I am. As a woman I have been harassed and assaulted many many times. There is one in particular that I have a hard time talking about publicly. It’s not that I don’t want people to know, I actually do because it’s a very important topic to discuss. It involves a boss and inappropriate behavior. How do you stand up to this kind of behavior when your job is at stake? How do you speak up when everyone could be out of work? People ask why it took so long for women to come forward about Harvey Weinstein but I know why. I know what it’s like to be too afraid to say anything. He had us all believing that people would hate us if we spoke up. Lives would be destroyed. It turns out nobodies lives were destroyed but his.

The reason I haven’t talked about this is because it involves other people that I am still friends with, people that I really respect. To out myself publicly would also be outing them and I can’t, in good conscience, do that. It’s also something that we haven’t discussed with each other, and at least to me it’s still an open wound. It was an ongoing incident over 2.5 years that ultimately cost me my job (because I would wake up wanting to stab myself rather than go back to work and my productivity dropped). To the people involved, if you are reading this, you are amazing and I am glad we are friends, although I wish it had been under better circumstances. Stay strong and fight the good fight!

C recently helped me realize that I have been so determined to finish this project that I have lost sight of all the reasons we were doing the project in the first place. I’m have been putting the house before everything else, including him. Over the last week or so we have both been trying to get back to the people we were, or at least the people we wanted to be. Instead of talking about all the reasons we want to move we are talking about all the good things that will happen when we move. Instead of saying “I can’t wait to move so I can have my own kitchen” we say “if we were home right now we could make breakfast and eat it on the porch while relaxing without feeling like we have to pack the kids up”. It really does make a big difference.

I am seeing the house differently too. For once in a long time I have been feeling joy and excitement when I am out there. We are getting very close to being at the point where we are just doing little finishing up stuff. Completing the Grey water, finish installing water and electric, concrete the walls, drywall, tiling, etc. it is so exciting. Pretty soon we will start moving stuff in.

Here are some awesome pictures to be excited about. I am standing in my future shower. This is my bathroom.

This is me in my closet looking into my bathroom.

the last of the tires that need to be put up and the start to the wall having a layer of concrete. almost finished framing the new living room wall.

We have a list of things that need to be completed before the roof goes on. We are still waiting to hear back from the guy who is supposed to be installing our roof so I am a little nervous that this will fall through, but for right now I’m just going to keep working like it is. In the past week we have almost completely concreted in the living room wall, we have started concreting the bathroom wall, built the pantry, and installed the floor and put up walls for our closet that we have recently decided to build, and almost finished installing the upstairs bathroom walls. We still need to frame up the Grey water, put up framing for the greenhouse, frame the front door, and put up the small concrete layer that will attach to the wall and roof framing. Our hope is to finish all of this in a week and a half, however this may change if the roofing guy falls through. We will see. I’m a bit nervous (totally freaking out internally) that we won’t be able to find anyone to install the framing for the roof. *think good thought…think good thoughts*

Meanwhile…here are some good things:

Worked for 4 hours today in sweltering awful heat. C was able to start putting up the walls to the pantry. I filled 7 tires on the living room section of the wall. As we were walking away to get into the car C noticed a creaking noise. After 5 minutes of trying to move tires the entire wall fell. It was always a worry of mine that it would fall again. The wall was separate from everything else and wasn’t shaped well. From here we have made the decision that the tires are done. We are going to level out what is left on that side, concrete the top to level it, and frame up an outer wall. The rest of the house should go a lot faster now. I am nervous that we won’t have be able to maintain the temperature as well with fewer tires, but all in all I think this is the best decision for us. Anyone want to come help put up framing?

There is so much to do and it’s all getting done so fast. We are down to our last 200 tires (it’s actually less than that but I figure if I strive for 200 and finish early I will be so super happy). Yesterday it rained heavily in the morning so we scrapped working on the house. Instead we bought almost everything we need to finish the plumbing. We also have hired someone to finish installing our septic (he should be out the first week of November) and have a guy who will most likely be installing our roof. Since we have decided to change the initial design of the roof we haven’t decided what we want instead. We are putting together three roof designs that we like and will decide when he comes back to us with cost estimates. So far I think handing over the septic and the roof to professionals was the right choice.

Now to finish the tires.

We had a forced 4 day vacation thanks to the remnants of Irma. So what did we do while we had the spare time? We priced out everything we need to finish the plumbing, we contacted some people to finish our septic (because some things we just need to hand off to someone else), and we actually took a short break. Starting tomorrow things get CRAZY!! I am super excited and so so so stressed out. I just keep telling myself that if I keep chugging on and just go one day at a time it will all come together. It will. I promise.

Tires are always slow going. I don’t share much because I feel like it’s the same thing every day. “Did more tires, it looks a little more done now, not really though”.

The good news is that the living room is rebuilt and almost level with the first floor. Also we have electric in all of the rooms under the loft. That is our crowning achievement at the moment.

The even better news comes from us being down to our last 200 or so tires. If all goes well (hahahaha) we should be finished with the tires and the walls of the second floor by early October. We are also considering hiring people to put the roof up and do the septic. We are waiting to hear back on that. We will keep you updated on how that progresses. In the meantime C is working on concreting walls, and putting in plumbing and electric while I am finishing tires. Yay!

We have figured out that if we bust our butts we should be able to finish the tires by the end of this month. It’s kind of making me want to hyperventilate. We need as much help as we can get in the next 30 days. I plan to be out at the house everyday until the tires are done. I am a bit overwhelmed.

I told you last week that big things are happening!!! This is super exciting. C installed the lights in the rooms that are under the loft. The next step is wiring. He hooked up the generator to the breaker box so that we can have electricity before we install the solar panels and wind turbines. It’s pretty cool!!

I don’t post as much when we are just working on tires. It seems boring and monotonous. We went out today and C took down the concrete forms around the top of the first floor while I almost completed one section of the leftover wall in the pantry, and we rebuilt one level of living room wall. Starting over the next few days things should be getting much more interesting. Here are pictures from today!