7/11/92

7/11/92

10:01 a.m.


My legs muscles and right hand feel stiff and sore from all the digging I've been doing. What a 10 mile walk didn't do to my body, a three foot hole has.
The sky is gray and it's sprinkling. Jasper says it's almost like the weather has some kind of rain quota it must meet each day. Yesterday we had about 12 straight hours of sunshine. All of the diapers on the clothes line finally dried and we were able to work outside all day. Then it rained most of the night and all of this morning, so far.
Jasper is stripping bark from a log that is about 20 feet long. He says I need to be done with the hole by tomorrow, because he wants to get started building the outhouse. I had a traditional 4 sided outhouse in mind, with a door and a fiberglass roof to let in the light, but he says that's a lot of work and extra expense for something that's only temporary. Even if we come back here again, he'd only want to stay for 3 or 4 months of the year. So, what he's talking about building is a two sided structure shaped like a "V", with the open part facing away from camp. It will also have a roof.
Ula's been playing that both of her grandmothers have come to live with us after their houses broke. She builds houses for them out of woodchips and then they all sit down and eat cake. She has been playing this same game for four days, although it has been occasionally interrupted by a game where she has a baby who is as old as she is and is always running too far ahead of her, "Slow down, baby! Slow down! Not so fast!" she yells at it.
Nika has three new words in her vocabulary, boot, dirt, and bug. She kept repeating "bug" last night, because Jasper placed a piece of rotted wood on the fire, not realizing that it had been colonized by Carpender Ants and we all got to watch them carry out eggs and find a new place to live.
The antsescaping from the burning log was a very organized activity. They first placed all the eggs in a pile next to the fire pit and several ants went off in all directions, scouting out a new place to live. Then they carried all of the eggs off to the rotting peice of wood that serves as a runner for the wood pile. They had been having trouble getting from the log to the ground, so I placed some of the longer wood chips up against the log to serve as ramps.
Nika kept pointing and saying, "Bug! Bug!" and wanting to crawl towards them.
It is sunny again and the rain has stopped, but by the look of the sky, it may rain again soon.
We heard a gun shot this morning while we were eating breakfast. We could also hear a chain saw early this morning.
I think that the book we are reading, Giants in the Earth, is getting to me. I had a dream that I was digging the outhouse hole, but to one side of me, instead of trees, there was open prairie and I was watching a group of covered wagons approach.