piemancer

I'm no stranger to Laundromats. In previous relationships, I didn't mind them, because it was a great reason to get away from Naggy McNaggersons for a few hours.

Now, though, I delight in the Handsome Daniel's company, and I want to spend all the time with him that I can. While he thinks a laptop and a wifi card will do him, I think he's way too impatient to do his laundry at a Laundromat.

There's one about two blocks away. I keep our dirty laundry in an army backpack; it has plenty of room for the laundry detergent and the laundry and I can put another bag in it for lights and delicates and whatnot, and bike it over.

BUT.

Our host, Fab Theresa, suggested we use her laundry. Ya, we gave her a washer and dryer that we had laying around, but we haven't installed it for her yet. She and I coordinate an evening that'll work for us, and we bring wine and we make dinner, and she provides the washer, dryer, electricity, water, and cats. Her job is to praise my awful cooking. I talk her ear off all night. I think it's a pretty sweet deal.

BUT!

What about travel? When I wasn't grooving on the Laundromat (and before I had my own washer and dryer), I got a Wonder Washer, a tiny spinner, and I hung my clothes up to dry in the summer. I've since given both away for being too bulky (actually, if you want the spin dryer, it's still in our tub). That was great if you had space for both and a place to hang your washing.

Since then, the Scrubba has been invented. It folds so small, it'll fit in your shoe. Nope, there's no comparably small spin dryer, so you'll have to roll your laundry in a towel to press out the extra water before you hang it up on your special, no pins needed, travel clothesline.

I am a terrible salesman, because I'm not even making the amazon commission thing when I send you there.

But ok, ok, one more thing I want to show you is this adorable ironing system. He's got fancy work shirts that need ironing, and I think we need this. He thinks we can build it for cheaper, but I think we have 1,000 other projects to do first, and we should just spend the money (even if we need the door to open to the left instead of the right) to get it right away. What do you think?

I don't have very much in storage. A small box of summer wardrobe to swap out with a box of my winter wardrobe when the time comes, my trumpet and banjo(I was sure on the fence about keeping the banjo... the stereotypes of playing a banjo in a trailer in someone's backyard was a bit much for my sensibilities, see). Unfortunately, my running shoes are in storage, too; my logic was that I'd get them out once I figured out my shoe situation in tiny. Some books to read and then give away, my business paperwork, and my cabinet of yarn and needles. The scuba gear was all in storage, too, until we realized that that's a thing we really need closer. So we keep it in our host's garage with her permission. Also, my adorable push lawn mower is in storage until the grass starts growing again. Our unit is about two blocks away; I'll look like a dork this spring when I bring it home, but at least it wont be for too long. Or I could just walk across peoples' lawns on my way and mow a stripe. But once it's here, it'll live in the garage.

Daniel... uh, I think, generally, the Daniel equivalent of the stuff I put in storage he put in Tiny, and the stuff I got rid of, he put in storage. It's not because he wanted to keep the stuff, either. The move snuck up on him and he didn't have time to give away as much as he wanted in the time that remained. This closet is an example (I think it's funny); we found the tape measure, so I can tell you that, hanging left to right, the closet is 26" Daniel stuff, and 7" Xine stuff. It's not that he looooves those shirts. He just hasn't yet made the time to cull stuff.

So. Shoes. I don't know how Handsome Daniel can get by with one pair. I have black heels, black flats, a pair of slippers, bike shoes, and winter boots. I also have a so-ugly-they're-cute grey pair of puma casual shoes I am embarrassed to say I couldn't toss, but their time is coming because I really need to make room for my running shoes, ok? And those are all the shoes left after I ruthlessly culled my shoes. And I didn't think I had that many shoes. OMG shoes.


We have boxes in storage that we're going to donate to thrift shops, but it's too rainy these days for the cardboard to survive in the bed of the truck. There is also a lot of electronics that we want to safely dispose of. Once we get that stuff out of there, we can move to a smaller storage unit.


Well, unless we get a hanger for the plane we're building. Then it can all go in the hanger. Yay for tiny!

I wish you a very merry Bowiemas to you all, on this birthday of Our Lord and Savior David Bowie.

So my Daniel and my dog and I all live tiny. I think I enjoy it most, and the dog enjoys it least. Of our 134.5 square feet of floorspace, I estimate that about 36 feet is dog-walkable hallway. Lika spends her time in the 12 square feet by the front door, where we have the Soggy Doggy Doormat (O god, I don't have the spoons to fix the url now, sorry, so it's below). It's a feckin' awesome rug for coming in the house and getting the wet and leaves off shoes and paws.

Anyhow, where was I? The dog was never very active in Bighouse, but she could wander from room to room. Now in tiny, I think she considers home to be just a very large crate. She'll walk up the hallway to sit by someone who is eating at the table (I do have to post pictures, dont' I?), but she spends her free time on the doormat.

We're not any of the flavors of claustrophobic- we don't mind small spaces or things like scuba masks around our faces. I'm pretty good at saying, "I'm waiting to get by you to get at the accordion," and Daniel is good at noticing that my hands are wet and handing me a towel from the bathroom or the kitchen. We both like physical contact, to shimmying past each other to get at the bed/bathroom/computer/wine/front door is no big deal.

Except for the bathroom, the house is all communal space. I have always loved the convenience of living tiny, and I love it even more so when things are very tiny. Cooking, working, cleaning, and recreating are almost always within arms reach, and kissing your loved one is no more than a step away, and it's nice. Yes, I do need the occasional break from the Handsome Daniel; just saying, "Hey, cutie, I want a little quiet time for an hour and a half or so," has worked for me.

We have electricity, which I love, and running water, which I also love. I'd be hard pressed to choose between them, since the electricity is also our heat. I love me some running water, but I'd probably pick the heat. We didn't have water during a freeze the other week, and that was a little inconvenient, but I doubt i'd make it without the heat.

We haven't gotten the grey or blackwater tanks fixed, so we're peein' in a bucket for now. It is no big deal to me, as long as we have water to wash my hands after.

I am also crazy passionate about composting, and The Humanure Handbook is just about the best read I've had in ten years. But let's talk about the bathroom, eh?

The Tiny Bathroom is tiny. Until we have the blackwater tank fixed, we have two Luggable Loos and we fill about one and a quarter of them in a week. That's, what, sevenish gallons of wee to find a home for? Also, yes, we found a home for it. But two five gallon buckets in an already tiny bathroom that already has a marine head plumbed into the floor makes for some tiny quarters. It's a good thing we don't want to use the shower, because we're using the tub for storage for other stuff (an inexplicable box of wires, an electric spin dryer, and two five gallon buckets of human wee, specifically). Did I mention we pee in a bucket?

Besides literally having only enough room to change your mind in the bathroom, it's not that bad. The sink isn't large, but it's deep, so there's still plenty of room to wash your hands or brush your teeth or... what else is there in a bathroom? Daniel shaves in the kitchen, which is bewildering, because the mirror is in the bathroom. But I don't shave my face, so I don't know.

To close this note, I will relate to you that some fuckknuckle stole my warhorse of a bike last week. I got a new gremlin of a bike from 2nd Cycle Tacoma(links also below- sorry about my spoonlessness, it's embarrassing), and I'm really loving him.


http://www.amazon.com/Soggy-Doggy-26-Inch-Microfiber-Chenille/dp/B00758B0BI/ref=pd_bxgy_petsupplies_text_y

http://www.2ndcycle.org/

Uh, yeah, so you spend a lot of time out of the house. And the house is where your computer is, right? >.

Our TinyHouse is a thirty year old camper trailer, from before what they call the "Four Season Trailer" era. So all the websites were warning me that, even burning the heat day and night, there wouldn't be the insulation in the floor to keep our feet warm.

Well, it doesn't get so cold in the Puget Trough, but we think the high twenties is plenty cold. Still, our tootsies have been even warmer in TinyHouse than in the BigHouse.

I'm still mighty grateful for the slippers I got for Xmas, though.

Dive 519               3/30 Three Tree

Dive 520               4/7 Cove 2

Dive 521               5/10 Three Tree

Dive 522               5/26 Junk yard
I went with Mark and Daniel, and Mark’s suit was pretty leaky.  

Dive 523               6/22 Junk yard 
I think I’m caught up. I just got a camera and underwater housing, so I might be more interested in writing up my dives. I think the battery ran out while it was waiting for us to go diving, so it reset itself to 1/1/2002 12:00 and portrait mode, even though I’d had it set up for macro pictures. I got a crab in focus, as well as a Mark and a Daniel, but that’s about it. The baby grunt sculpin I took a picture of didn’t quite turn out. Heh. 

 Daniel, Mark and I went to Dash Point for a dive. Even if you're not a diver, i think Dash Point is a lovely park.

In the course of the pre-dive negotiations, where I am liable to ask, "Shall I make reservations at the restaurant?" after five minutes, the dog and i wandered off. She proceeded to poo the biggest poo i have ever known her to poo. It took both hands, and still barely fit in a breadbag, and I had to go back after with my dive water to try to clean off the area.

Also in the course of my pre-dive beachcombing, i found a young oyster on shore. None of us were sure if he were alive or dead, so I walked out on the pier until I could see eelgrass on the substrate before I threw him in. I had high hopes, but one can never be sure if a beach find is alive or dead.

Mark and were ready long before Daniel,  but when we were all ready to go, I am delighted to report that I found the same oyster i'd thrown off the pier, agape and alive, and filtering the water for lunch. 

There's a religion where it's their job to show mercy to animals. I blame them for the pacific oysters and lobsters I find in puget sound. But I don't call that mercy. But i'm rather an asshole when it comes to animal rights. It would be kinder not to trap the animals at all. But then, i guess the kind of folks who release lobster and crab aren't the same folks who eat them the rest of the year.

The dive was fun. Some of it, i spent looking for fishing lures. It was like easter, except i was protecting the wildlife I loved. I saw a stubby squid, and Daniel got some great pictures. 

 

We had a lovely dive off Alki last week with Mark and Daniel. I loved the wildlife I saw- really interesting starfish and tubeworms.  There were loads and loads of horned shrimp. I couldn't help but think that their fear response is kind of useless.
A harbor seal made a couple of passes, and I felt bad for the harbor seal at the aquarium. Such a small enclosure. Also a stubby squid.  Daniel found a mostly decomposed space heater down there, and Mark came up to it and tried to warm himself up. It was cute.

Another dive yesterday with Mark, while Daniel and Cliff did their own dive. I was awfully cold. Really cold.   We found a little boatwreck just out of sight of the no-swim line. Nearby, we found a dead juvenile harbor seal. She was pretty recently deceased- she still had all her skin and whiskers. She was pocked with shrimp scavenging off of her, though. I also saw a gravid whitespotted greenling nearby, just before I found a lost mares fin.

I saw an unfamiliar species of barnacle, and I was all excited. After the dive, I commented on that, and Mark says, "You can tell barnacles apart?" 

 I'm sure i've had at least two dives since my last entry. One i led a three tree, and one was with Mark at Alki. There might have been another dive. Between then, we assisted our beloved dog in his last week on earth, and then buried the impossibleness of his death. Soon after, our cherished friend finally admitted that the reason he'd been so absent lately was stage four throat cancer. So a bunch of suckiness. And we aren't ready for NewDog yet, but we have a home for NewDog if you know of a dog who needs a home.

Daniel and I did a fun dive at Cove Two tonight. I was surprised he wanted to dive with me without another party depending on the  dive to make it happen. Maybe he's interested in fun dives again. 

We saw a lot of great stuff. Shiner perch in abundance, and huge pile perch and deep perch. Gunnels galore, and loads of horned shrimp among the other species and species of shrimp. Daniel found many octopongles, and we found enough stubby squid that it was getting hard for me to keep track. We even found stubby squid eggs! And some rockfish and red irish lords. 

We were only underwater for 52 minutes. My computer said the max depth was 95, but i'm not trying to show anybody up.