the desire for deprivation

lent just ended this past sunday. the strange thing i've noticed about lent (other than the whole "there's a man in the sky" thing) is that people who aren't particularly religious suddenly feel the need to give something up. i heard a number of friends, coworkers and even family members announce plans to sacrifice various guilty pleasures -- reality TV, cheese, soft drinks, facebook...

while all this was going on, i was engaged one afternoon in my new motivational habit -- searching the web for blogs by people who have gone a year without buying anything new. in so doing, i came across all kinds of deprivation-themed stories. blogs by people attempting to give up coffee. or smoking. or swearing. people who went a year with no meat. people who went a year only eating locally-grown food. or raw food. people who went a year getting around solely on their own power. a woman who opted to move into a 90 square-foot apartment in new york city. so... many... cleanses. the vegan cleanse. the wild rose cleanse. the smoothie cleanse.

from our free refills to our texting plans to our internet bandwidth, we are truly moving toward a land of no limits. in a culture of such shameless excess, is it any surprise we're yearning for ways to deprive ourselves?

table making! (weekend 2)

weekend #2...and it's warm enough to take this show outside!

the high art of making corners: take a circular object. shove it in the corner of the table. trace the outer curvy side of it. chop that part off.

sanding the corners

hey! this crazy thing's starting to look like a table!

the continuing adventurers of girl jesus

the lady tessa

gord checkin' in

the orbital sander! it looks like a tiny martian. BUT A FRIENDLY ONE THAT HELPS YOU MAKE FURNITURE.

jane and gord ♥

at last, it's time to put on the first coat of finish! this is a water-based, eco-friendly clear matte stain. $20 at home despot.

painty painty paint

imagine that i wasn't painting a table, and i just inexplicably posed like this all the time?

purtttyyyy

while the first coat of finish dries...to the maple sugar bush! it started to rain so we hung out in the wee hut that houses the boiling machine.

this is the sap boiling. 

maple steam wafting in from the boiling machine

TAZ

future tables...

mmmm

jane gets the pancakes going...

mmmmmmmm oh wow, that kind of looks like manparts. oops.

us doing us things. like sitting! sometimes we sit. other times we get up and walk around.

WANT WANT WANT WANT!

THIS!!!!!!!!! THIS HAS JUST BECOME AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE. OH, NO BIG D. IT'S ONLY A MEMOIR WRITTEN BY ONE OF MY PERSONAL HEROES. i'm being tested: tested LARGE.

the free spirit

i have to take several momii (that there's my brand-new plural of "moment"...LIKE IT?!) and sing the praises of FREECYCLE. if you're new to freecycle, think craigslist, only everything's free. so you post things you want to get rid of to the freecycle website. a brief description, maybe a photo. you present your things as "gifts." then, people email you and tell you why you should pick them as the recipient of your gift. you pick the person you want (often, this is based on nothing more than "this person sounds nice" or "this person lives close by" or "this person can spell words properly"). then you arrange a meeting time and give your gift to the good speller man, et voila! your stuff has a new home.

i've been using freecycle a lot in the few weeks since we moved. i've acquired a litter box, given away a table. given away a CD player, acquired a poster frame. it's really an amazing little community built on simple eco-conscious principles and just plain good karma.

what i love most about freecycle is the notion that everything you need already exists. someone in this city of three million has got whatever it is you're after. sure, it's a bit of extra work to find that person, but it's oddly satisfying if and when you do. much like life itself. WHAAAT!! BAM. NAILED IT.

the other day we were trying to get rid of an old coffee table. i suppose we could have made $25 off it, but in the end, it went to a woman on freecycle who sounded like she really needed it. and that just felt better.

like a bat outta debt!!!

today is a joyous, glorious, glorious, joyous day, because today, i am finally free from the evil clutches of student loans! it only took 4 years, 10 months and 17 days, but it is one of the greatest feelings EVS.

and i have to acknowledge that my year of buying nothing new is probably the reason i pulled it off. it's only three months in, and i've saved a whole bunch of money, paid the aforementioned loan, and started an RRSP. REAL GROWNUP ALERT. LOUD SIRENS.

getting organized financially has been a sort of unexpected side effect of this year. i figured i'd save a bit of cash by doing this experiment, but i've been surprised by how even a tiny pile has inspired a totally new mindset. it's amazing how once you've got a even couple hundred bucks saved, you feel super motivated to keep at it. it really doesn't take much money to get the momentum building. and, as my father-in-law liked to advise, "always pay yourself first!"

emergency room

there is verrrrry little room for emergencies when you're not buying anything new. if your tights rip at work, if you get totally splashed by a bus in a rainstorm on your way somewhere and your socks are soaked, if your cat's litter box gets lost during a move....there's no nipping across the street to grab a new one.

this year, buying something requires foresight, planning, and patience -- i've gotta search for the item on craigslist, maybe wait a few days and check back until someone posts the item i need, arrange the meet-up -- so it's hard to know what to do when say, you're in beautiful belize in a tiny town and it's 40 degrees out and you're gonna be in the sun all day BUT you've somehow lost your sunglasses AND your boat's about to leave!! when you don't have three days to solve the problem, what do you do?

if it hadn't been for that teeny emergency, i would have made it through my vacation without buying anything new. but that day, i caved and ran across the street to a wee shop and purchased its only pair of lady sunnies. i suppooooose this could be considered an "essential" -- i mean, it's not healthy to spend the entire day in blaring sunlight without any eye protection. OK, maybe that's bull roar. but it did get me thinking about how much i rely on stores for those moments of desperation.

table making! (weekend 1)

it began with a pile of salvaged orillia cherry tree wood!

finding the pieces that fit together best

gord explains basic saw safety to me, worriedly

loading the wood into the truck to go get it planed in town

this is brian. he let us use his planing machine

uncle gord, wood planer extraordinaire

after we straightened and sanded the wood, we glued the planks together

and then used this bar clamp to force the boards to love each other

gord forces the love

i took this photo to show how hard i yanked this crank. unfortunately, photography failed to capture the awe-inspiring brute strength of my muscles.

when the glue pops up like this, it's a good sign - it means you've clamped the boards nice and tight

we are the clampions

AWWW YEAH

sanding that shit down

mrs. sandman, bring me a dream

the tiny army tank of sanding

mr. sandman, bring me another dream. but a different one, this time, OK?

GRACIE!!!!

GRACE 'N BOOTS

taking the glued wood to be planed a second time

gord gets high on fumes

the saw OF DEATH

the wood emerges victorious from the planer, smooth as BALLS!

AS BALLS, I SAID!

brian introduces the wood to some "sandpaper on steroids"

now we have to glue the two halves of the table together

but she's looking pretty damn good so far! (a stand-back-and-admire-it shot)

getting the two sides straight with an orbital sander

yeah, they're not so straight yet

behold! she is glued and clamped like a wolf who's also a medical doctor! (or something else that rules)

I AM CRANKING SO HARD. nobody knows what it takes to be me.

mixing sawdust and glue to put in the cracks

testing out some different stains