Ah you have to love a good nursery rhyme.  Our Six year old came home from school yesterday singing an old nursery rhyme she had learned in kindergarten class.  The good ole, “don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your momma’s back.”  She was hoping and skipping in the hallway.  Once she skipped her way into the kitchen where I was standing, Sierra continued.  As she hopped I watched her and then she stopped and said real quiet like, “oops!”

So…as she turned around to look at me, I dropped like a fly!

A new pair of shoes, $17.00

A box of colorful chalk for hopscotch, $2.00

The look on Sierra’s face when she landed on a crack and I dropped like a rock, PRICELESS!

When all else fails…bury it!!  Macgyver and I are sick and tired of trying to find a way to make this building aka our home easier to heat.  We have, or he has everything else down to a science and running efficiently by solar or wind energy.  The heating options are vast, monetarily there are only really 2 I can see.  When you live outside the box to begin with, you are forced to stay out of that box for EVERYTHING.  Heating this place in a conventional manner is not an option, it is not a conventional home.  OUT OF THE BOX.  I have more hours of research into this than any woman should have to admit and I’m not even going to begin to put target hours Macgyver has in on it.  The overall heating of this place is a monster not just money wise but to change it is mentally draining as well.  While you hear the money being sucked out of your wallet, you can hear your brain seeping out your ears, as the brain churns with ideas.  We have walked the halls and wondered, yelled and flat out asked the air, why it was built so damned inefficiently.  In my last blast of research this morning I came upon an answer for us.  Our home is an old elementary school in case you are new around these parts.  Meaning we have cinder block walls and the outside of the home/school is brick.  Now, while you may think cinder blocks have historically been used to prop vehicles up that no longer have wheels, they do actually have a construction use.

The buildings in the North were sometimes double layered with cinder block, thank the gravel pressing concrete god, ours is not.  For large buildings cinder block used to be the strongest way to build.  Also it  had no problem withstanding any snow per pound per cubic foot a roof would have to support in order to support the roof, hence load barring walls.  The whole idea was that cinder block was not visually appealing to the eye when a car is not propped on it tireless.  Hence add a layer of brick around the cinder block, give it color and another layer of hard stuff had to help insulate the buildings.  Here is where things go awry in that thinking.  The is almost no “R” value whatsoever in either.  Translation – you have now constructed the coldest building human kind can build, minus the fact it could have only been worse if they forgot to build the walls.  You have two  building blocks filled with pores and they absorb water and moisture like a sponge.  This is why you can never really insulate such a building very well, even from the inside.

If you go all out and insulate the inside to the “T”, the outside will in no time at all, crumble.  You have created a barrier on a building that is meant to breath and push the moisture from outside to in and vise verse in summer.  Which means in the winter that moisture gets locked in the brick and block, freezes and expands breaking it all apart in a short time.  The only way to combat this is go on and insult the inside but also spray the outside of the building is a block/brick sealant every 5 to 10 years.  Trust me with the size of our home/building this is NOT an economical choice in the least.

What does that leave us with as choices?  Build another house in the yard and live in that during the winter every year?  Not too appealing to furnish 2 homes or worse move your entire household every 6 months or so.  There just isn’t enough Bengay in the world for that really to be honest.

A month or so ago I had a dream about our house.  We buried it.  We joked about it but quite frankly I was on to something!  Oddly the husband seemed intrigued with the idea and claimed I was tempting him.  Over the last year I have watched Macgyver toil over how to best heat our home and have seen geothermal contractors ushered in and questioned.  The last one, poor guy, was questioned by me.  I assure you I saw the terror in his eyes as I my questions and referred to our current steam heating system as poppycock and I don’t mean the buttery caramel pecan popcorn snack.  All in all geothermal is out for us because I am not sinking 300k into a way to heat my home and put someone else child through college.

Geothermal…think, think.  Um, hmm, 5 feet under ground you say is a stable 50 degrees, hmm.  Research earthen homes, check.  Researched sandbag homes, check.  Underground homes leave a very small footprint, mostly heated with wood or solar.  The earth stays at a constant 40-50 f, requiring you to only raise the temp 20 – 30 degrees inside.  I could do that just by chasing on of the many children I have for 15 feet.  SUBTERRANEAN BABY!!!  Oh yeah, sure are, yep yup yeppers!  This nutty family is going to wrap the house in the ice and water membrane and bury the freakin house!  This thereby turns the whole thing into a geothermal home, the hippies were on to something in the 60′s.

If you thought I was hanging on my a thread of sanity before, just you wait.  Stick around and watch the fireworks go off this summer.  We are going to BURY our home!

Satellite image of our home via Google. The red is our home sitting in the middle of the woods.

Some of you may have never seen a truly desperate man, others I am sure have seen plenty.  Macgyver normally is not what I would call desperate, more of extraordinarily inventive.  However, I will let you make the call.

This bathroom reno is on hold, but that doesn't stop Macgyver. This is how I found him a bit ago. The man has the tub up off the floor and temp plumbing set up over a drain to take his Jacuzzi tub for a test drive. Desperate or Inventive?

Every Sunday in our house is “hot tea day”.  I wake up and have my first and only cup of coffee for the day.  Pull out the tea of the day from one of the many jars we have collected and drop the leaves in the cage.  Heat the water up to just about boiling removing the pan when the first bubble surfaces.  Slowly, I fill the glass tea pot and set the lid back on to steep.  This morning I have chosen peach mango herbal tea and it fills the house with a divine smell.  Sunday is a busy day in this house.  Laundry day, muffin baking day, bread making day and get everything ready for the school week day.  But… no matter what is going on, the pot is steeping its goodness.

The kids stop whatever they are doing when the smell hits them, and they come running.  Everyone pulls out their favorite cups and gather at the kitchen island around the steeping glass tea pot.  Sunday IS hot tea day in our house all day long.  The glass tea pot steeps the entire day from dawn to dusk keeping us warm and wrapped in wonderful exotic scents.  I hope it is a tradition my kids pass down to their own and enjoy long after I am gone.

Sierra enjoying her tea and waiting for more

If you had to describe your current sex life with a movie title what would it be?  Come on don’t be shy, I’ll even go first.  Considering all the kids Macgyver and I have and one home with us everyday driving us nuts, I will have to go with….

Hide and Seek or While you were Sleeping )

Yes, I know the tile is strange, the anatomy of a fart, but I live with a bunch of children.  What, you expected a review of the latest issue of Newsweek?  After my weekend long mathematics test with Macgyver, which I failed miserably I might add, I ran to the kitchen for solace.  The new heating system, specs, mathematics, schematics, and decisions are not my job.  Now, if you want to talk chocolate, baked goods or turkey, I’m your gal!  I hid out in the kitchen baking a golden brown, garlic, rosemary and thyme turkey.  Yeah drool!  The smell wafted through the house, instantly making our stomachs grumble.  Well except Macgyver who sat at the table with his pad of paper talking to himself.

I know there is that chemical in turkey which makes you tired after eating it and boy I was whipped.  The kids and I turned on a movie and completely took over one entire couch.  Nina aka Minnie Mouse was snuggled up to me under the blankets.  While everyone silently watched Mars needs more Moms, the 3 year old started explaining the anatomy of a fart to me.  Her theory is farts are just happy bubbles.  They live in your stomach because that is a safe place for them.  Boy is she ever right!  There is nothing safe or happy about a fart one of the dogs lets rip.  OK, so why are farts happy?  Well she says the air trapped in a fart, are just unused giggles and that is why the farts are happy bubble.  All of that rolling and bouncing around it does in your stomach is because it is happy trapped giggles.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her some gas is almost demonic paralyzing pain until it escapes from one end or the other.

Did you also know that farts are flat one they come out?  Neither did I don’t feel bad.  The child went on to tell me a loose fart had to be flat.  Really are you ready for the reasoning behind this HA HA HA.  Here we go then…when the fart comes out your body pushes all the air to one part of the bubble and the pressure pops the bubble on the way out of your body.  After listening to her I just had to ask the obvious question.  If farts are just happy bubbles why are they so mean, and angry once they are free from our body and smell so bad?

And just like the famous songs states, as did our 3 year old…The answers are blowing in the wind.

My husband is made of a lot of things, this weekend he seems to be filled with numbers and he is spilling over.

After spending this weekend with Macgyver, I am sure of one thing.  He is trying to make my brain ooze or pop.  Home heating is the topic yet again in our house and if you have seen the pictures of our house you understand why.  Now…there are several ways we can go about heating our home but to find the one that is the most efficient and economical now and in the future is the one we are after.  At this point we might have a better chance of winning the Minnesota state lottery.

What do we have to ponder?  Currently we are heating with propane as a steam boiler system from 1954.  As you might have guessed it is a wee bit outdated as the sheer girth of it a bit over kill.  However, even taking the age into account we are looking at finding an equivalent of burning somewhere around 38 million BTU’s a month.  Enter the possibilities, outside wood stove convert to water heat, forced air furnace  and all the ducts, geothermal and all of its ducting and the newest being hydrogen heating.  With all of the numbers, calculations, conversions, multipliers, and whatnot, my brain is seeping out of my ears.  Macgyver takes the current systems output and btu’s, then you take each new way to heat and do the massive calculations to come up with a btu and then get the monetary value for that way of heating.  Now once you are there, you have to consider knocking it down in other ways, such as electricity usage.  Which means…you add up the number of let’s say solar panels you would need to provide power for a single way to heat.  Is that premade panels, well you have to do self made as well as premade.  Get that monetary number and then move on to a generator and ways to fuel that.  Wind turbines and battery banks, more conversions and monetary values to consider and on and on.

For example did you know that the multiplier of the comparison of hydrogen to propane is not 4.76 but is 3.15?  Here is why, propane is a liquid and hydrogen is a gas, so it takes 3.15 times more hydrogen to fill the same space as propane.  All of this is not taking into account the current temperature of the time of measurement or the environment it sits in, since propane for example boils at 44f below zero but hydrogen gas has no boiling point.  So you have to get one which is a ton of conversion and you get 423.17f below zero and then you have all of the changes in between.

Now…here is what I know.  My ass is going to the kitchen to roast a turkey before he cooks my brain completely.

Sometimes Macgyver and I feel like we are sinking on the Titanic, sing it Celine, “My heart will go on”.  I know I haven’t posted in a few days but trust me I have good reason.  Do you recall a few months ago when I renamed Monday to Craptastic?  Here is a new one for you to use as well.  The past five days thus far have been a craptastrophe of mega craptastic days.  Life at the old north school has been wet and wild.  Yep, bet those are two words you wouldn’t use to describe a school or my house.

Here we are in northern Minnesota, snow piling up outside, but Macgyver and I are sporting our flashy swim suits and scuba gear.  Rest assured we are not choosing this attire because we are throwing a Maui party in one of the rooms down the hall.  For the last 5 days some room in this place has flooded, in record time I might add.  I have never seen something flood so fast!  OK, that last statement might not be true.  I completely forgot the toilet exploding in my office similar to a blow hole on a whale.  Well…Ok, and there is the nude plumbing part 1 & deux caused by the lack of any water shut off valves.  Almost every room in this place has a sink and 80% of those have a water fountain attached to the sink.  100% of all the sinks have no shut off valves.  100% of the 80% of room which have water fountains, also have no shut off valves…because they are plumbed on the same water line as the sink.  Let’s just get down to brass tacs here, the plumbing in this place leaves a lot to be desired.  Furthermore any repairs done to said plumbing also leave a lot to be desired.  Macgyver has found plain copper lines slid over each other and crunched with a pair of pliers, in hopes to hold the pipes together. Even I know you have to use connectors, flux and solder to connect copper lines, NOT crazy glue or hopes and dreams.  Everyday a flex water line pops off a fountain or some freakish elbow cracks for no reason other than we apparently look bored our of our minds.  Who knew 600 hundred gallons of water could shoot out of a line smaller than your pinky finger in 20 minutes or less?  Every day some room, somewhere springs a leak, turning into a monumental flood encompassing half the house.  Question is, we are 5 rooms down, none of which are the newly carpeted rooms (knock on a national forest), leaving 8 rooms left to blow, which room is next?  This does not include the kitchen or any of the bathrooms or the 3 water fountains in the hallway.  Needless to say, this is day 6 my Hoover shampooer and Macgyver’s wet/dry vac is ready for the next flood.

Day 4 I had to document this flood. Starting at the front doors running down the hallway about 120 feet.

Way down there in the dark is my laundry room and a lake. This was from Macgyver's wood working room, notice the saw dust on top of the water flowing down the hallway.

Cause for flooding on day 4, freak crack in elbow

Not to forget the copper pipe that was shoved in another then crunched with pliers. The shiney end is the end that was put in another pipe, notice the dark rings, those are ridges from the crunching. Hopes & dreams people, that is how the plumbing was done here. We shove this in here and hope it wont leak.

Parenting is a thing that can give and give.  You’re just really never sure what you are going to get.  Yesterday the family and I were forced to head to Duluth where an actual Harbor Freight store is, we are not talking just a magazine anymore people. Duluth is the New York city of northern Minnesota, so I put on my best thermal flannel coat I’ll have you know.  I’m working on the girl thing, remember baby steps. First, I say forced because Macgyver wanted a little family time.  Nothing says family time like a team of kids locked in a suburban poking, hitting, shoving and singing (out of tune have mercy) rolling down the road at 70 miles per hour for about 3 hours, one way.  Might I remind you at this point how sick Isabelle and I have been for the last two days.  Explosively sick, and I am sort of impressed with Macgyver for wanting to take us with him.  It might have been easier to take a nuclear warhead on a roller skate through the badlands, but kudos he did it.  Second, Harbor Freight to Macgyver is much like chocolate to a pms-ing woman.  Once you have it in your sights nobody is really safe.  Turns out I was drawn to this log splitter, solar garden lights, tools, tools and tools galore, gloves, farm items…DROOL.

I have come to a conclusion, remember when I turned 40 this past summer and I thought some big epiphany, light bulb moment and or Oprah’s “AH HA!” moment would take place?  Do you remember how confused and a tad disappointed I was when nothing changed but my underwear that day?  Well after a few months to ponder the meaning of life and all, I had my “AH HAAAAAAAAA!” moment, just like good ole Oprah said I would.  I was standing in isle 7 at Harbor Freight and it hit me.  98% of what is in Harbor Freight will make my life so much easier!  I will stop and smell the roses while weeding them, now made possible by this lovely tool and gloves from Harbor Freight.  The grass will be greener on the other side of the fence!  They have this spreader I can attach to the 4 wheeler and spread seed in the Alpaca pasture this spring!  The list of treasures and pleasures all this new found free time can bring us goes on.  As did my mental list of inventory I want from that store as the kids drug me to the bathroom.  If you are a parent than you are fully aware every child is a bathroom connoisseur.  Since I have more children than the average bear here, I have connoisseurs looking for details.  We have the child who looks for easy access, how it is decorated, smell as well as overall cleanliness, but my favorite is the child who is more concerned about the acoustics of the bathroom.  Yes folks we have a singing diva and once Beyonce gets started, rest assured the back-up singers chime in.

Macgyver bought the item we had come for in record time, now highly impressed with him.  All loaded back in the truck and sitting at a traffic light before getting out of town, I made my detailed mental list I would come back and attack with.  Macgyver sat in the driver’s seat with a smile on his face, I know the man was secretly working on his own list.  All bundled up in fluffy winter coats we almost filled the front of the truck.  Happy, fluffy and warm Staying Alive came thumping out of the radio.  Looking more like gophers from the Caddyshack movie than two adults, we sat cabbage-patching at the light.  Then all of a sudden Macgyver and I had a “couples AH HAAAA” moment.  Moans of complete embarrassment came from the back of the truck in the form of 2 pre-teens.  AH HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!  Payback time.  For all the I don’t wanna’s, no I didn’t eat the cookie (being said with a face COVERED in crumbs), leaving live creatures in your pockets and still sending the clothing to the laundry room, crying about meanie parents that won’t let their children swim in the dead of winter at 50 below, how we cruelly crush your dreams of being the next batman and NOT allowing you to jump off the roof to fly, the bacon grease in the hair and yes, even the now 15^th frog let loose in the house.  Light bulb moment, commence Operation Pre-teen embarrassment.  Let’s not forget to add in sequel 1 through 6 just to get them through the high school years.

Oh yeah, cabbage patch, “Ah ha ha ha ha stayin alive”!