When it rains, it pours...then you get mushrooms

Our dear black cat Voo, has been losing weight since the white dog passed. We found out he has two kinds of cancer and a blocked bile duct. He's not going to make it. For now he's as home with a tube in his tummy and we have to feed him from a syringe 4 times per day. Waiting for him to get worse or pass, both of which are inevitable. It's a lot of loss in a short amount of time.

Between finals, the move, leaving my job, continuing construction, greiving, and caring for our sick cat; I'm at the end of my rope. Did I mention I have also had laryngitis for a week? Unfortunately I am also picking fights with my husband, who is also stressed. He doesn't do things, or think about things the way that I do, and his social needs are different from mine. It's hard to be sensitive to his needs when I feel so bad myself.

Construction and moving have been stalled by the rain this weekend, but I expect to find morels in about a week thanks to that same rain. It's much the same in my life right now. We have had delays and challenges ($3,000 vet bill for one) but ultimately we are still heading toward the prize. Our phone and internet go in at the farm on Friday, so that will make studying much, much easier, and DH and I won't have to spend every weekend apart anymore. Having class online is great, but it has kept me tied to our house in the city.

Voluptuous update: I got to pick out beautiful locksets for my new house, I've never had anything new before, just always dealt with what was there, it was fun. I went with rubbed bronze and feminine curves.

Simplicity update: The bees arrived on Earth Day, 3 stings and it went OK, but there were some intense moments. I fixed the hive and liberated the Queen on Saturday, which was uneventful. So far I am a GREAT beekeeper.

My husband is so hot

So, last week, DH took a week off work to finish building my farm house. I worked in WI per usual on Wed and Thurs, so he came to get me in town and take me out to the farm on Wednesday evening, a big treat, because I have been sleeping at work on Wednesday nights since it got too cold for the wood stove to heat the house even by morning!

We get some drive thru for the boys working on the house and talk about nothing as we wind down the country roads. We come over the hill and the house looks pretty much the same as it did the last time I saw it, but I see some trim around the windows. I enter the old part of the house and much to my delight, the existing buildings have all been joined to the new addition! I look through over 1,000 sq ft of living space on the main floor to the wall of windows that face the garden and 30ft vaulted ceilings soaring above the living room! I get to live here? MY husband built this? DH is on the floor and stands up with a 9 wk old puppy!

Ok, for real now, does a girl NEED much more than a new house, a man in a tool belt, and a puppy?

After a brief but intense argument about where electrical outlets should be located, we enjoyed a weekend of bliss, imagining our new life and reveling in each other's company. Isabella, our new baby dog, does everything cutely, so she is a constant source of entertainment and joy. As DH says, "Whitey would want us to have another dog and endorse us as good dog parents."

Went to two dinner parties with friends, I have threatened all of them within an inch of their lives not to abandon us to the country. They in turn made me promise not to be a crazy internet social butterfly without a real life.

I have visions of a long banquet table in my barn with straw bales for benches, mason jars full of wildflowers, glowing candlelight, my homegrown bounty and homemade cheese on fresh pizza dough, cooked in my woodfired oven in my outdoor kitchen. Surrounded by friends and family DH and I sip wine and think, "this is the LIFE".

Yes, I AM wearing an apron with pearls.