Yes, We’re Living In It!

Finally. Mark & I, along with Ava, CathyCat & Elizabeth, are living in The Nomadic Lemming aka the THOW. We’re still in the process of fitting things in, or as I so eloquently put it, trying to fit 50 pounds of shit in a one pound bag. I promise (I know, I keep promising) there will be ZILLIONS of photos, but until the art is up and the stuff that is going to be traveling with us has found a home, no. It tends to look like a garage sale that vomited upon itself right now.

But. It’s also awesome.  It’s OUR HOME!

Mark has been FABULOUS about building and installing shelves, making a screen door, figuring out how the various systems work, etc. I’ve been pretty darn good about finding homes for things. Of course, sometimes things find a home, then they get uprooted, or evicted, and need to find a new home.

It’s been grand to have my own kitchen again, and our own bed. The cats LOVE it. Within 5 minutes of having brought them over Ava was up the stairs and lounging on our bed.  CathyCat & Elizabeth soon followed.

We’re currently parked on our friends property in Fall City, WA, and plan to stay here until early spring, when we’ll set out on the road. This way we’re getting lots of time to settle into the house, and hopefully work out any kinks.

I sincerely hope that 2018 brings us all health, peace, and love.

Remember – Unfuck the World
&
Namaste.

More Progress, New Motto, & Mark is in Houston

Mark left on Monday for Houston, to work with Best Friends Animal Society for a month, where they’re working on re-uniting the rescued animals with their people. I’ll miss him, of course, and we won’t spend our anniversary together (tomorrow, 22 years married) but I’m super proud that BF contacted him to see if he would be willing to go. 🙂

This is the latest photo of the inside of our house. Lots of windows, and a soaring ceiling line. Ironically, it will probably be finished while Mark is gone.

And regarding the motto….Mark & I went to Clark County Fairgrounds a couple of Fridays ago, to attend a Tiny House celebration/show sort of thing. It was REALLY cool, because it wasn’t just THOW, it was converted buses, and vans as well, and getting to meet the people/families/dogs that lived in them full-time, and traveled. I LOVED their enthusiasm, and their passion for their lives. And I REALLY loved seeing the VERY different personalities that their homes had. One of the things I’m really looking forward to with ours, is making it OURS. It will be a work of art when it’s finished by Abel, but I’m so looking forward to adding our art, and cats, and our stuff. Our homes have always had a lot of personality, and this one is starting out with so much, I think it’s seriously going to be a gem.
At the Tiny House celebration, I was behind a women at one point, who had several buttons on her backpack. I was reading them, when one of them hit me with the force of a thunderbolt. It was like the skies opened and the universe handed me a message that seriously resonated down through the soles of my feet, and into my soul.

Unfuck the World.

I have never had 3 words affect me the way these three have. It wasn’t even a decision to make this my motto, my guide, my muse, for the remainder of my life. It just was instantly a part of me. And I will do what I can, whether it’s cooking/baking for friends and family, expanding my mind and my heart, making art, and volunteering to help cats (and bats, and pitties, etc) – I think every positive thought, gesture, step, action I take, that we ALL take will help to achieve this.

Let’s work together to Unfuck the World.

 

This is a Photo Looking UP

Mark snuck in to make some photos of our house recently, and  I really really really LOVE this one. The curves, the angles, the beauty, To me, this is like looking up in a church. It’s getting real peeps! Scary as shit real.

I thought I’d do a little explanation on names. The name of this blog, Nomadic Lemming, will also be the name of our house. Nomadic is pretty self-explanatory. Lemming, not so much.
Mark kind of earned the nickname Lemming when he sort of drove a vehicle over a cliff. (Do you remember that Disney flick where all the lemmings ran off the edge of a cliff? Supposedly that’s what they did when there were too many of them? Turns out that isn’t true, and they were kind of ‘encouraged’ for the photo shoot). Oh, and Mark was fine by the way,

Anyway.

The other reason Lemming stuck as a sort of nickname also requires a touch of explanation. Do you remember when you could order like 100 pens with your name or a slogan printed on them in fake gold? Mark found one of those order forms and wrote ‘Into each life a lemming must fall’. And for some reason his mom sent away for 100 of these crazy cheap ass pens.

And there we are.

 

No Red Sink after all, & no one nailed the colour!

Turned out we couldn’t put the red sink in the bathroom due to space constraints. Seriously, inches matter! (SO many inappropriate things come to mind with that line!)

The colour I chose is above – Lavender Shadow. The closest guess was Violet Bloom by Barbara Weider! So Barbara, when Mark & I are in Kanab, you get a dessert! And probably dinner, too. And I suppose we could invite Tom as well……  🙂

 

Rafters! But no correct guess yet…

More progress! Yay! Cool curvy rafters!

BUT….

No one has correctly guessed the bathroom floor colour yet. Would you like some more time? Would brownies, or a cheese cake or some Forgotten Kisses be worth your trying again?

Even if you’ve already guessed – I’m feeling generous – try again with a different colour. 🙂 Not everyone should be pardoned, but you’re all friends and deserve it.

Purrs & Hugs, Jenn

https://www.armstrongflooring.com/commercial/en-us/products/vinyl-composition-tile/std-excelon-imp-texture.html#products

 

Guess the Bathroom Floor Colour!

Abel sent this photo to Mark & I in the last week – it’s so exciting! Progress is being made!

Almost more exciting, at least to me, is that we got to choose the colour for the bathroom floor! (and yes, I’m aware I spell colour with a ‘u’. I learned to spell colour and honour etc. from my Mom, who went to school in Canada. Allegedly.) (If you know me well, you’ll get that joke.)

Mark left the decision to me, he has liked all the colour choices I’ve made in the past.

So! Here’s the selection of colours. The only additional info I’m giving you is – the bathroom sink is a lovely cherry red.

The winner of the contest will get some baked good of mine that they desire.  Either in person if you’re on our route, or mailed to you when it gets cooler.

Ready, set – GUESS!

https://www.armstrongflooring.com/commercial/en-us/products/vinyl-composition-tile/std-excelon-imp-texture.html#products

Much luck!

Purrs, Jenn

 

Let’s Talk Toilets!

Yes, that lovely behmoth is what our toilet is going to look like. I may need a step-stool to be able to get on it. (heeheee- I said ‘stool’). (Yes, I AM a 7 year old sometimes!)

When we first started to seriously talk THOW, I was NOT on board with a composting toilet. I grew up, as I’m guessing most people reading this did, with your standard indoor flushing toilet. You sit down, do whatever you need to do, flush and don’t think about it again. And I’ll be honest, I LIKE that.

But, (heehee) we looked at the options. There are 3.

1.  RV style toilet. You flush, but then you have to deal with ‘black water’ and suck it all out with a hose and dispose of it properly, trying not to splash onto your shoes. EEEEEWWWWWWW! Plus, you’re also dealing with a lot of gross chemicals and it just sounded too nasty for words.
2.  An incinerating toilet. Seriously. You go poop and then you press the BBQ button. Well, THAT didn’t appeal to me for a couple of reasons. A LOT can go wrong. Mark posted a link from a blog about a guy in the Navy who was on a ship that had these – and between MRE’s and a malfunctioning Incinerating Toilet, let’s just say NO. Plus, they use a LOT of electricity.
3. Which leaves us with – a Composting Toilet. The one we’re getting is a Natures Head model, as opposed to simply a bucket. You’ll notice there is a removable plastic container at the front – that’s where the pee goes. If you’re going to go poop, you pull the little lever on the side, which opens the trap door to poo-land. When you’re done, you either put some peat moss, or sawdust type material on top of your poop, and you’re done.

My biggest concern about a composting toilet was that it would smell. So, when we had the chance to go into a THOW that was using a composting toilet, I was VERY relieved (heehee) to see that there was NO hint of poo-land in the air.

The most common question I’ve gotten from people is – how often do the compartments need to be emptied? From what others have told me – you need to empty the pee container every 2 – 3 days. But what AMAZED me, is apparently you only have to empty poo-land every 3 – 6 months. Do you notice the handy-dandy spinning device on the side? Yes, you DO (snicker) get to shake things up in Poo-land! Mark & I even read about one woman who used composting worms in her toilet, though I’m still on the fence for that one.  (For some reason, it just seems wrong to shit on the poor worms!)(And if the worms LIKE it, that seems even worse!)

What has been interesting to me, is that the more I think about toilets, the more wasteful the normal type in the US IS. SO much clean water is used with every flush. And while I promise to never get holier-than-thou about my composting toilet vs. your flushing one, I will ask that you don’t pre-judge mine before you try it out.

My end thought was that it’s like a cats potty box. If they’re kept clean, they don’t smell. 🙂

 

The Virtual 3D Images

So, these are the 2 shots of roughly what the THOW is going to look like. The roof will be a copper coloured metal (Shiny!) and the more elevated part of the roof is right over the loft – with a GORGEOUS window there. It still doesn’t seem like this is really going to be our reality – relatively soon!

And I have to say, that while the THOW IS super behind schedule, if it HADN’T been, Mark & I wouldn’t have been able to help out Nancy & Crispin with lots of stuff, and Mark wouldn’t have been able to help our beloved friend AmyH move from Kanab to Portland!

And to say we are BEYOND grateful to have a place to stay with the cats, with people we love and THEIR awesome animals, is an understatement!

Getting There….

 

That may not be the most exciting ‘photo’ ever , but it’s pretty exciting to us!

We had a total scare recently – Abel’s office assistant emailed us in regards to a question we had about the stove, saying we’d not communicated that we wanted one, and basically suggesting a toaster oven type thing.

I had a complete panic attack, because while I can totally work with an ‘apartment sized’ stove/oven, I CANNOT live with a toaster oven in place thereof.  Well, technically I COULD live without, but when you’re designing your home, you put in what’s super important to YOU,right? Which for me is – Stove/oven, running water, toilet, shower, bed, a way of having guests, heat, A/C, and a place for the cats potty box. Not necessarily in that order.

It turns out what happened was this. And bear with me, I don’t know technical terminology for some of this. On the trailer where the wheels are, the metal curves over them. Rather than have the floor flush with the top of the curve, they designed it so that the floor is flush with the bottom of the curve, in order to get an extra 5″ of height. But when the floorplan was put into virtual 3D, the curved bit was under where we’d elected to have the stove/oven and it kicked it out of the design. So, when Mark & I were going down to Portland last week, we stopped in Olympia to meet with Abel and get that fixed. The stove/oven is BACK in the game plan, and on the end of the ‘kitchen’ area nearest the wood burning stove.

Whew!

And you all know what that means? It means that as we’re travelling about, when we’re in your neck of the woods you can place orders for baked goods! Delivered right to your door!

Out of curiosity – what would be different on your own list of Must Haves in a custom home?

 

A Little Bit About the House-to-be…

The photo is of a Kimberly Stove – which is what we’ll have for heat and to some extent, de-humidifying the house. They’re wood burning stoves that were originally designed for ships. They are super efficient, and do something called a second burn, which means there is virtually no pollution.

The house will be 22 feet long, 8 foot something wide, and 13 foot something high. The width and height have to be street legal, and 22 feet long seemed plenty to be hauling!

Obviously our house will be made of wood, primarily cedar. Our California King sized bed will be up in a loft (well, it will pretty much BE the loft! As Mark says – one of the joys of being married to a mutant). We will have stairs, because when I have to pee at 3:00 in the morning, I would kill myself with a ladder. PLUS, the cats need to be able to come sleep with us! Oh, and the cat box is being built into a spot under the stairs,

The bathroom will have a hot-water on demand system for the shower, and we’ll be using a Nature’s Head composting toilet. We’ll have more on that later – but suffice it to say I was NOT enthused initially, but have since come on board. And NO, they do NOT smell if used and maintained properly. There will be a pocket door for the bathroom to save space.

The kitchen will have a fridge/freezer – not the size in most homes, but bigger than a dorm size. We’ll have a stove/oven – the slightly narrow style, but still able to get a cookie sheet in the oven. Several cookie sheets. 🙂 Farmhouse sink, and the counter tops will be butcher board.

We’ll have a sofa that can be configured into a guest bed for two, and a dining room table that expands.

Lots of windows, an A/C unit, and a little shed on the tongue of the trailer for the batteries (we will be solar capable) and propane.

Oh, and the roof will be metal, and will look copper (sparkly!) but won’t be.

Whaddya think?