Mark spent years --- literally --- teaching me to take weekends off.  I'm finally starting to appreciate them as two days to dream, relax, visit, overdose on books, and allow myself time to compulsively follow whims.  This weekend, my compulsive whims are twofold.

I've gotten a bee in my bonnet that I want to be able to speak a bit of Spanish when we go to Mexico on our cruise this fall.  I know its silly since we'll only have two days on shore and will be in touristy areas where everyone will probably speak English.  But I always used to dream that I'd be fluent in half a dozen languages, and was sorely disappointed when four years of high school Spanish didn't even make me fluent in one.  So I checked out Spanish in 30 Days (book and CD) from the library and have been enjoying lots of short, concentrated bouts of studying ever since.  My listening comprehension skills are horrible, which means it's a fun challenge.

My other whim is researching how to build simple and cheap sheds.  Mark and I finally decided that we needed to make him a little Avian Aqua Miser workshop --- he has been constructing our chicken waterers outdoors under a tarp.  On hot days, he's running with perspiration and is constantly swatting sweat bees.  On cloudy days, he has to scurry and put boxes under cover before they get soaked.  So we're hoping to build a little 8 by 16 foot shed by winter to enclose his work space and give him more room to invent.  (And maybe give me a little indoor bathing chamber with lots of windows....)  At the moment, it's only a dream, but that's what weekends are for, right?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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