Long ago, in my early years growing up in the shadow of a mom who listened to protest rock CDs and anti-Vietnam War music, I found myself pulled in the same direction. Peace, love, and envisioning a life of drum circles, nude hot springs, or communal living.
In various ways and at various times, I’ve realized pieces of that life. In hot springs. Around campfires filled with singing. Even in how I’m living now. Spread out as we are, there’s an ease to walking next door—or to the next door after that—and sharing a badass lawnmower.
Well, the next dream on the list is a yurt.
The round, domed structure—once a necessary, transportable home across the prairies of Mongolia and parts of Asia—appeals to me simply because it looks cool. And because of its open floor plan. Oh, and it’s cheap!
I remember watching the 2004 presidential debate in Ellensburg at a friend’s friend’s yurt. Young and raising a small child, she’d been given the structure by her parents so she could live nearby, have her own space, and still have support.
I was enchanted.
The rugs. The beads. The flavor of princess-meets-monk. Pillows scattered everywhere, incense drifting through the room. We sat on a couch (boring, I know), but everything around it felt magical.
It stuck with me.
So yeah, that’s still on my bucket list twenty years later.
Next up is an update on how the new bunny is getting along with Puffy. If you remember—or if you weren’t here when we somehow received a bonus bunny with the purchase of a ping pong table from Facebook Marketplace—you’ll know the newcomer is also a male. Since Puffy is a male too, everything I read warned against putting two males together. They might fight. They might even kill each other.
So, for a week, they were separated by a makeshift fence around a kiddie pool.
As of today, the fence is gone.
They now share a 12-by-12-foot area on the back porch, and although they occasionally do little flip-kicks that seem to say, “Hey, back off,” nothing even remotely injurious has happened. I wonder if all that guidance is based on caged rabbits. These spacious living quarters give them plenty of room, separate food and water dishes, and a four-inch-deep habitat of soil, grasses, and plants that I put together for them.
Currently, I’m sitting inside, spying on them through the window as string lights softly illuminate their little world. They’re about four feet apart. One is lounging in the kiddie pool while the other is happily snacking on pellets.
I feel like a researcher observing through a one-way mirror. Only instead of holding a cigarette in one of those long holders with my pinkie sticking out, I’m eating Cheetos.
Yes, Cheetos.
It’s the third night in a row these fluffy fake-cheese things have become part of my nightly snack attack.
Alright, I’m outta juice.
I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Night night.
Love,
Jaclynn