i love the quiet of sundays. it seems that where ever i have lived in the recent years since i have started noticing, it’s been quieter. even here in the country, the world is moving less. i can hear the trees, the sound of their silence. and the drips of water as the snow melts. cause, oh yeah! guess what it did here! ahhhhhhhhhhh! i am in heaven. it snowed five days ago, a big dump of 10cm and then added maybe another 10 over the course of the week, and it hasn’t melted! this is unheard of for these parts. oh how i love snow. i love how it hugs you in your house, invites you sit down by the fire with a hot mug of tea. silences the world around you. sometimes even silences the neighbourhood with a power outage! invites you to reflect. i am really craving the blue castle right now (the LM montgomery book i spoke of previously), but it is buried somewhere in my boxes of books, so i will just have to remember as i walk through the woods, gathering lichen specimens and photographs. wondering at the two foot wide splotches in the snow, with no tracks surrounding. at first wondering if they were some sort of bird that plopped down and wrastled about before taking off again, until realizing they are snow tracks, or maybe tree tracks: the big unloadings of heavy snow that slide off the branches far above, making their mark down below. the forest is a wonderland right now. oh to have two things i love so at the same time – big trees and snow! it is rich here.

i just finished a scrumptious lunch of salted fried potatoes with egg and fried kale, and now am settling in with a cup of hot mesquite, which my friend nay just turned me onto. it’s the ground bean, and to me it has a chocolatey/coffee taste. i’ve never been a coffee drinker, but i do love the smell. and being someone who doesn’t eat any sort of sweetener other than stevia, the sweetness of this bean is a sumptuous delight. this morning i went and tried group meditation that the same friend organizes at another friends house. what a lovely space he has there. he has been collecting wood for decades – he is a carpenter – and has put all of his favourite pieces into this room, on the second floor with windows on all sides. when we were done i sat gazing out the high windows, being lulled by the tall firs. i am loving visiting people right now, since i am feeling much closer to building a house. gathering ideas. i am also excited by the fact that it will be bluff top, so i can’t just lay out a rectangular house with ease, i have to work with the landscape unless i am ready to rip things up and tear things out. i am not saying i don’t think this will be challenging, but i am excited about what the end result may be. how will it be integrated into the landscape or how will it not? i want to have at least two floors so i can get ocean views on the second, maybe three? not a third full floor though, just a nook. but maybe that will be excessive. and the ocean is to the north, so how will i lay the house out to get the maximum light and still feel like it faces the ocean. these are just things i am thinking about right now. it is fun to dream.

somehow i didn’t have work this last week (other than one evening), or potentially next week! go figure, i don’t know how it’s so close to christmas and there is no work. but that’s ok. i had a lot of projects i wanted to work on that i still have barely put a dent in after a week! i did get the majority of a cabinet built, just the front and doors need doing now, but it has surfaces and shelves, which is what i really wanted! it got below freezing for  a few days, so outside work wasn’t too enticing. as to that – this bus is not insulated enough for that weather. i think the coldest it got was -7 celsius. my woodstove is not airtight, so the fire goes out and loses all of it’s heat within about three hours. the morning after that cold night i woke to it being +3 in here – with electric heat on overnight – and my cat’s water dish was frozen. also for all the bus converters out there: condensation is an issue! the four thermal panes and door are fairly fine even in that cold, though their steel frames aren’t so great. but the rest of the windows are dripping, and each little screw that holds the metal ceiling to the steel beams that encircle the bus, is wet. and there are A LOT of those, about 65 per strip, with 7 strips in my ceiling. i am determining that that is a difficulty that comes with living in a metal box, and i am not quite sure what to do about it. in the beginning it might have been good to totally get rid of the bus windows and put in double paned wood-framed windows, but that is currently beyond my expertise. and what about the backdoor and windshield? perhaps bus living is meant more for warmer climes?