We're settling into life in our two-room cabin, and it's going surprisingly smoothly. While we did have to pare down our belongings when we got here and send more than we'd anticipated back with my parents to our storage garage in Iowa, we've mostly got what we need here and have been pleasantly surprised at how un-crowded we feel. Our setup does pose a few challenges; for example, the bathroom is off of the bedroom, and so our choices when Eden is napping are to hold it, drive to the nearest gas station, or wake the sleeping baby (we opt for one of the former). The laundry is coin-operated, and that makes for a considerable investment in quarters when one is cloth diapering. However, Matt has solved that dilemma by bravely handwashing and hang-drying ALL of our laundry. Surprisingly, it really doesn't take much longer! The grocery shopping options are also less varied, but that mainly means that there are fewer temptations (Trader Joe's vanilla ice cream and Pound Plus Dark Chocolate come to mind)-- which is a good thing, since we're trying to make it on a $40-50/week grocery budget that includes plenty of fresh produce, grassfed meats and dairy, and pastured eggs. In the past year or so, we've come to welcome limitations as a good thing in most cases, since we aren't very capable of placing them on ourselves.
I've been to two births so far, one Amish and one non-Amish. The midwifery practice I'm precepting with has been everything I'd hoped for. The midwives are all very different from one another, and I'm excited to think of everything I can learn from them in the next several months. I finally feel like I'm going with the flow, rather than the frantic paddling upstream I've always felt when working in a hospital setting. It's amazing how good it feels--it hardly seems like work at all.
Today, the weather is in the 70s (down from the 90s for the first time since we've been here) and we started the day with a long walk past cornfields, grazing cows, Amish farms, and a one-room schoolhouse. We're planning to go to the farmer's market when Eden wakes up, and run a couple of other errands. We're really enjoying the opportunity to sever some of our previous addictions to technology--by necessity these days, we're checking our email every couple of days or so, have no opportunity to watch TV or movies, and even turn off the radio when we're in the car. While we felt a bit stir-crazy the first day or so, we're settling into a slower pace of life where basic chores like washing dishes, cooking meals, doing laundry, and taking care of Eden are our life, rather than something we have to fit in around it, and I also relish the feeling of not having to compulsively rely on something to entertain me. A couple of recent articles I've read have made me committed to slowing down and learning to actually think and read and focus again (all things that frequent exposure to glowing screens tends to disrupt), and this is certainly a great place to learn how to do that!
