Once upon a time, there was a young family–a husband, a wife, their son, and their daughter. They didn’t have much money, but they needed a big home in a beautiful, small town. When they looked for such a home that they could afford, the homes were either too small or cost too much money. So, they decided to build what they needed with a very small amount of money.

People came to help them: a banker to give them a loan, a builder to make sure the home looked the way the family wanted, a painter to make the walls look pretty, and many, many other people. It took a pretty long time to build the home because it started raining and just kept on raining until finally, the home was ready for them to use.

There were four bedrooms to use. The daughter picked a bedroom that had a beautiful arched window and high ceilings. The son picked a bedroom that overlooked the next-door neighbor’s home. The husband and wife picked a bedroom near the kitchen. The remaining bedroom was for people who wanted to come and visit the family in the new home.

I have asked several people to critique my book. Unfortunately, only one person has accepted that challenge and done so. Most authors/writers would pay someone for this critique, but since I make no income from my writing, I hate to make the hubby pay for yet another one of my writing adventures.

I have pretty much exhausted the free types of services. Then I thought, “Why not allow my blog fans to have a whack at it?”

So, if you’re game, I will put out the introduction to my book in this post and then one brief chapter of the book in another post. What I need most is to know whether or not it makes any sense to you. If not, please be specific about what wasn’t clear, so that I can work on correcting that.

Also, would you even pay a couple of bucks to download such a book on your e-reader? If not, I need to either scrap this writing idea or work really hard to make it worth such an expenditure.

As a stoic Scot, tears are not considered “kosher.” (How’s that for mixed cultural references?!) I tend to abide by that idea. In my defense I have several reasons to do so:

1. I get migraines from a stuffed-up head. Even though I now have much better meds to prevent and deal with these headaches-on-steroids, my 50+ history of dealing with them has created a habit of not giving into anything that produces a stuffy head.
2. When I do cry, I’m the ugliest of criers. Probably because I do wait eons to cry, the actual act is much worse–because tears for everything that has ever caused frustration and pain usually converge into 1 enormous crying session. The result? A stuffed-up head–see # 1.
3. I’m a pastor’s kid. As the daughter of a pastor, I learned to pretend that I had it together. I am now so good at it that I consider this an asset. And, like their pastor parents, we PKs learn to be strong for others and only break down when we have no resources left.
4. Because of the ugly crier issue, I prefer to cry alone. This means that I often have to wait until I get home to let the crying commence. For a couple of decades even getting home wasn’t a remedy because I had to be wife and mom when I arrived home. After arriving home, I would often forget that a crying session might be in order due to these responsibilities.
5. I’m an American. We Americans believe in pulling ourselves up “with our bootstraps.” We’re fiercely independent and believe that tears are a sign of weakness. As Tom Hanks said in A League of Their Own, “There’s no crying in baseball.” And apparently the only places were really allowed to cry are in hospitals, funeral homes and at weddings. Even at funerals and in hospitals we Yanks live with the possibility of being called a “sissy” for crying.
6. I grew up with two older brothers in the early 60s. Frequently, my teenage brothers wanted time to themselves, away from their demanding, whiny sister. I, on the other hand, just wanted to be a part of their “club.” If they denied me this privilege, I usually cried. They often responded with a denigrating tone, “Cry-baby!” This taught me that crying was not okay.

They say talk is cheap.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Talk can move mountains.

Talk can inspire.

Talk can motivate.

Talk can calm.

As of last Wednesday at Solitude

You are invited! On Saturday, June 4th, 2016 we will have a log-raising event at our lakeside lot in eastern Texas. If you are interested in watching the logs go up, please go here to let me know of your interest and I’ll email you details.

In the last Log Rhythms post I wrote about our process to determine who would supply the logs for our lakeside cabin. I named the “finalists” by letters in an effort to “be kind” to suppliers who didn’t meet our requirements and needs.

After visiting all of the mills for these 7 suppliers, we came down to two choices: Supplier E and Supplier F. Here were the basic differences between the two:

Supplier E was significantly cheaper and specialized in square cut logs (which is what we hoped to use.) They build traditionally, meaning that one has to give serious thought to where pipes and wiring needs to go so that the logs are drilled accurately for these necessary items.

Two weeks ago I recounted our educational journey about selecting logs for our log home at the Reserve in Montalba, TX. In case you hadn’t already deduced this, we elected to go with northern white cedar logs for the main construction. Northern white cedar is incredibly stable, is naturally bug resistant and tends not to twist over time. We will use some other woods for particular uses inside, but northern white cedar will be trucked to Montalba in June.

How did we learn all of this about logs? We met with several log home suppliers. From attending a couple of log home events, we learned that it’s important to select a supplier that is financially sound. With the recent recession many suppliers went bankrupt. Also, a supplier should be easy to work with–if people don’t return your calls or emails, obviously, there are going to be problems down the road as construction begins.

Square-logged cabin

I’ve been asked by several folks to post about how one approaches designing and building a log cabin in the 21st century. Today I will begin to outline the steps my hubby and I took to get to where we are today: ready for construction.

I have a sneaky suspicion he and I were exceptionally particular about this process compared to most and that may be why people are asking us to write about it. They’d either like the information because a log cabin has been a dream for them, too or because it seems so wild that we would embark on this journey at this point in U.S. history and in our lives.

Because it turned into a lengthy process, I’m going to outline the first steps we took and then post in May about the rest of that process. Here are the Lessons Learned from the “early going” and what we’d recommend to others:

Sunset on Serenity

I was not looking forward to a trip to East Texas in October 2014.

My brother’s best friend wanted to dedicate a park he had created on some property he was developing and he invited my other brother and my family to be at the dedication. I was not looking forward to it for several reasons:

1. I was just getting to the point where I wasn’t sobbing incessantly about losing my brother.
2. The event would be attended by people I had never met except for my brother’s best friend, my other brother and my hubby. I’m an introvert in such situations by nature and awkward when I try to fake being an extrovert. Add grief to the equation and I’m doubly awkward.
3. My allergies often send me to the ER for anaphylaxis. These are costly and threaten my very existence. I wouldn’t be where I already knew the doctors and hospitals if that happened…not bueno for me, since my health adventures defy typical medical scenarios.
4. The Reserve (the development where the park was being dedicated) was full of lakes and a wide variety of trees, bushes, etc. Translation? It could be my allergy tomb! Mold is often around bodies of water; I’m allergic to all kinds of dust, grasses, weeds, and tree pollens.

These roses are the same as those sent by the hubby yesterday!

Yesterday was a somewhat monumental day for me…for several reasons.

Compassion Counseling Center had all 4 counseling rooms going at the same time…a first for the Center since it opened on January 15th. This week we are seeing 7 new clients…another first. And two of our three counselors-in-training are pretty much getting the hours we want them to have each week so that they can complete their practicums on time. The other counselor-in-training is closing in on that mark quickly and the large reason for not being there already is simply a matter of scheduling, not a lack of people requesting our assistance! I’ll take these kinds of birthday gifts any year. They are directly sent from Heaven.

But, I realized it was significant for a whole host of other reasons. As Facebook did what Facebook does best–alerting my family and friends that it was a special day for me and that awesome group of people took the time to extend birthday wishes, I couldn’t help but flashback to previous birthdays that involved them.

Beginning when I was 39 years old and had a 4 year old, 9 year old and 13 year old, I had two back-to-back heart attacks even though I was perfectly healthy. When this occurred in 1999, WebMD didn’t even list my heart condition as a possibility for such human beings. Fortunately, that has changed.

But, there is still much to be done for Prinzmetal Angina, which affects 139,000 Americans. Prinzmetal (named after the researcher who discovered the phenomenon) has a 50% death rate and when diagnosed (only by the divine intervention of God), I was told I could have a heart attack every 10 to 15 years from that point forward. We still don’t know much about why my coronary arteries like to spasm out of the blue and cause blood clots and their resulting heart attacks.

I seem to like to have my heart attacks in pairs and I hate being late, so a little over 14 years later, I had heart attacks # 3 and # 4.