It's a girl/semi-detached bungalow!
About six weeks ago a friend asked how the build was going and I said "I'm in the transition stage of labour. Basically it's come to "JUST GET IT OOOUT! Except the baby is a house."
My friend winced, then blushed. We were in a cafe and I had shouted rather loudly. But I was fed up.
It had been well over a year of working every weekend and two days of the working week. Almost eighteen months of hard decisions, financial pressures and trying to balance home, kids and a building project. It had been a long haul. I wanted my hobbies back. I wanted to wake up on a Saturday morning with the question "What shall we today?" remaining delightfully open.
Two weeks ago, I was feeling different.?I'd moved on.
It had been a really hard week with conflict with our builder and hard decisions.
What I had now, I explained to Timshel, was more of a post-labour feeling. Perhaps the feeling of being through a hard, long, painful labour that went of for days and days. Your eyes are black from pushing and you have stitches in places where you didn't know stitches could be. You have a new knowledge of pain that makes you see the world with a little less innocence. This shocks you. This aches about as much as your body. But you have this baby. This beautiful beautiful baby. A raw thankfulness springs up and makes your throat sore. A feeling of wonder and gratitude sings loudly. It's the main chorus, it's a loud song. But underneath there is a quiet whisper.?"I hope this is worth it. I hope I forget this pain."
I've cheered up since.
It's two weeks till we leave our rental. The house is unfinished. We are trying to finish the two back bedrooms before their carpet arrives in just over a week. The other rooms remain unpainted, with no final coat of render and unsealed floors. Trenches are being back-filled in the next few days and we hope to get Mick, our Bobcat man, to smudge the dirt into something resembling a potential lawn. Power points are going in on Monday, and lights on Tuesday. On Wednesday the header water tank is being craned onto the it's stand which will deliver water pressure and, if successful, a rousing cheer for Murray, our friend with a crane.
It's not quite how I envisaged it. So much is undone or incomplete and there have been a few disappointments along the way. (We tested our concrete sealer on a few floors. It's not what I expected but that's another post.) I suppose I was hoping that we'd move out of our rental into a new, finished house with everything done and dusted. It's a silly expectation given the number of people who build their own house and end up camping in a small corner of it. Every second person seems to have a story about walking on joists to get their weeties. I should just harden up, I know. My excuse is that I have completionist tendencies. If a strawbale house is, as Pearl and Elspeth say, a really big family craft project then moving in with it still unfinished is like lovingly crocheting your cardigan and then leaving the house with one arm unfinished. It just feels sooo wrong.
However, I have come up with an antidote to the wrongness feeling. It's this.
The house, whatever is state of completion is ours. OURS! No-one can evict us. If there a problem we can choose how, and when, to solve it. We can paint it however we like, keep planting bulbs and trees, and chip away at things in our own sweet time. I do feel a raw thankfulness. Both for our house, and for the 'us'. It?might be unfinished but it's OUR unfinished house.?Back to the birth analogies, I feel like I'm cuddling a lusty, red, squawling newborn to my chest and yelling above the din?"Well, 'e might be ugly but 'e's MINE, innit!?!"
It is a loud and happy song.
Source: http://buildingwithstraw.blogspot.com/2013/03/dreams-bring-responsibilities.html
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