Just Another Day Again

Newport is the Pend Oreille County seat and where you go to pick up your building permits. So. We drove the sixty miles to Newport this morning thinking we'd be driving back to our tent with our permit but instead we drove back with a new bath towel and a new broom. Even though it was nice to bring home the towel and the broom we would rather have brought home a building permit. So far it's been pretty easy to substitute a t-shirt for a towel and ignore the dirt and dog hair but there is no substitute for a building permit. Maybe Friday.

To me our little house is so simple and sweet but to the permitting office it's one big heavy gray area that keeps sinking to the bottom of the pile on the inspector's desk. It sort of reminded me of when we applied for a credit line during our VOmax years because I'd read somewhere that if you were a business you had to have a credit line. Since we didn't owe any money there was no formula that we could be plugged into and we were never able to get a credit line which was fine because we never needed one. Anyway. We got our plans back with sloppy red letters screaming we needed several pages stamped by an engineer. We found an engineer in our new phonebook who said that, based on the phone conversation we were having, it sounded like we'd be able to walk over and wait while he looked the plans over, approved and stamped them. We hung up and walked to the engineers office with bounces in our steps. We shook hands and confidently handed him our plans. I watched the color drain from his lips as he slowly and noisily turned from one page of the plan to the next. I'd been sure after seeing his office full of books, diplomas and charts with numbers he'd be able to plug our plans into some sort of calculator but instead he asked us if we could come back day after tomorrow. Shoot.

I guess we can wait until Friday. The electric company might come then too so it could be a really big day.

I look forward to bed under the down comforter covering a pad on the floor of the tent. Forty-four degrees should feel uncomfortable to me right now but I love the way it feels. Digesting the sesame broccoli brown rice and tofu cooked in a wok over a Coleman stove with light from the full moon supplemented by a lantern I feel really really alive. Who wouldn't be totally content being me right now? Probably most people.