I woke up a couple of months ago and announced that I couldn’t take it anymore. We have been sleeping in a squishy old double bed that was Huck’s until he grew out of it. It was a temporary (2 years now) arrangement that had reached my limit. We had decided that the next bed we bought would be king-sized, but that could only happen if we finished converting the old living room into a bedroom because our existing bedroom would not accommodate anything larger than a queen. Morgan loves me; he got to work.

As I said in my last post, this was maybe the easiest conversion we will make in this project, but there was still a lot to do. Wiring, patching plaster, covering the doorway to the old kitchen, patching and refinishing the floor, and of course painting. Then there’s furnishing, window treatments, and actually moving in to be done!

All of this displaced Huck’s virtual school and workout station to the dining room where he set up his new desktop computer which took over most of the table. While we enjoyed seeing him a lot more and interacting with him around whatever game he was into, it also meant that we had to compete for audio space if we wanted to watch TV, listen to music, or talk. This meant that rather than taking the time to paint our old bedroom or unearth and refinish the fir floors in there we left the 20-year-old paint job and replaced the ratty old wall-to-wall with some carpet tiles and called it good for now.

We have more work to truly complete the transitions upstairs— doors and door trims need painting, some furniture needs to be shuffled around, art needs to go up— but this weekend we are taking a breather. We are sleeping in the new room! It’s so cool! Annnd… the mattress we ordered to fulfill our king-sized dreams will not likely be delivered for several weeks, so we are still on that crummy double bed floating on a gigantic bed frame. The anticipation is killing me! But whatever, I am more than fine; what a joy to have this fresh perspective to wake to for this new year.

Oh 2020, your numbers seemed so round and promising…  and really, there was a lot to love.

If you follow this blog at all, you have a sense of what our year was like, but there are some things I left out. I was able to return to work in June with all the relevant PPE and procedures in place. I have had to scale back just a little bit because of my own needs, but all the work that I want to do is there for me and I am tremendously grateful for it. I had just under three months to walk my neighborhood and work in my garden while collecting unemployment for the first time in my life, and it feels pretty great to be helping people feel better in their bodies five days a week.

Huckleberry entertained himself this year by building a WW1-era German Soldier’s kit for re-enactment gatherings and earning a well-deserved black belt through his Kung Fu school. He also did the classroom portion of drivers’ education online and managed to continue learning virtually at his high school, Summit Sierra. Most of his social life was screen-based, but we did manage to get some kids over for an outdoor birthday celebration in August. He also co-created a ceremony for his own coming-of-age with our friend Ben, which took place in late October. He’s currently studying the German language with an online tutor in addition to the challenging coursework of his junior year. Also, despite being 16 and trapped at home with his parents, his parents still love him a whole lot and even enjoy his company!

Morgan has been busy building things for other people, but he did manage to make a real bathroom for us and learn a whole bunch of new songs on the guitar. Check out this pretty base he made for our friend’s big-ass crystal!  Someday, when this house is done, I hope he spends more time making beautiful things out of bronze.

Speaking of beautiful things, I spent a lot of time pointing my fancy phone camera at them this year, and I have managed to put a lot of them up on my Flickr account.  Have a look!

In early March I was invited by a mentor to see this year as a crucible, a metaphor that I sincerely hope is fitting. [crucible \KROO-suh-bul\ noun. 1 : a vessel in which metals or other substances are heated to a very high temperature or melted. 2 : a severe test. 3 : a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development.] Change is hard, and we generally won’t undertake it without sufficient discomfort. I am grateful to 2020 for showing us in great detail what work we have in front of us, and I believe (despite some very discouraging evidence) that we will undertake at least some of that work in the years to come with the energy and wisdom that this crazy year has generated. At the very least: change is coming, and we would be wise to participate willingly and with our wits about us. 

One or two things this house project has taught me: 

• all progress should be celebrated
• the modern sewer system is a civilizing gift 
• a heated home feels really cozy 
• adaptability is a crucial life skill 
• patience and perseverance pays off 

So, my friends, let’s celebrate the progress we have made for just a moment before we forge ahead, in our heated homes, with our flushing toilets and clean water to drink. Let us cultivate a sense of the profound privilege of being, of having bodies in in this particular place and time. What a weird and wonderful marvel! 

Much love from all of us here at the Hammershack, where we wish you resilience, fortitude, and best of luck in the coming year.

Greetings from the middle of the apocalypse. The skies are dense with the smoke and ash of what seems like all of our hopes and dreams. We are months into a global pandemic and ensuing economic disaster, years into a political catastrophe that amplifies every bad choice we have ever made. What shall we do with our heavy hearts, our horrified eyes, our saddened souls? When will we “hit bottom” and start stepping our way to humility? I reach for my emotional crutches, and they carry me only across the room to look out my closed windows at the smokey orange sky. Netflix, sugar, caffeine and alcohol probably won’t fix this. I can’t garden or walk outside. Social media is filled with anguish and anger. Connecting to my people through video chat is… fine.

I will be honest with you and confess that I have not meditated more than once or twice since March. I have been hobbling around on those crutches and holding my breath, riding the waves of dullness and despair when they force their way through (which is frequently) and literally focusing my lens on the beauty I see around me. My instinct has always been to keep working, try to show up, be of service. It is my attempt to balance the continual onslaught, to stand for growth and possibility, for the bigger picture and the higher purpose. Thankfully I am able to work, but it is harder than it was six months ago, it exhausts me.

The past few weeks have been really hard. There is So. Much. Grief. We have enormous work to do, and we can’t seem to get past pointing fingers and yelling at each other about whose fault it is that we are here. Free-radical fear is finding purchase in every body and then amplifying itself in chain reactions of mirror-neuroses. Hat tip to the sociopaths who are probably the only folks feeling ok right now- I’m not even throwing shade here, this might be why we need them in our societies, to keep going when all feeling people are crippled by the resonance of pain.

I see you light-bearers, I see you strugglers, I see you, fellow humans. I want so badly for this to be the moment when we find the collective will to do this work together. Where we somehow find the capacity to truly see our impacts (on each other, the planet and all her beings) and instead of lashing out or running away or shutting down we take a moment to just allow that it is so. Perhaps then we can see more clearly what part we have to play in the revolution, and in my dream the revolution is one of acknowledgement and connection. In my dream dignity and respect are afforded to all beings, and our words and actions reflect our interdependence. That dream requires the capacity to bear the truth of the suffering of the world, to respond with humility and love, and in so doing to unlock the joy that is triggered by my reunion with all that is. So I will begin again the practice of being, of allowing my heart to sing me the songs it knows (terrible, wonderful, all the notes in between) and of letting my body be the instrument of my life and of all life, ten minutes at a time.

Pretty sure there’s an app for that.

I am told that if we do this together it works better. I have found other folks doing soul work and have today committed myself to rejoining them for regular support and visioning. If you are interested in holding the story of reunion with us, there is a zoom call coming up on September 29th, and I invite you to check it out here: https://sarahmacleanbicknell.com/courageousgoodcompany/ If it feels right, I will see you there, if it doesn’t, I hope you are finding your own support and succor. Strength and resilience to you, my friends, I am glad you exist.

It’s finally ready to show off- our brand new bathroom! Actually, it’s a shower room. This would probably just be a half-bath in a different home, but we need this room to take care of all of our hygiene needs for an unknown period of time, so we made it a wet room with a drain in the floor and a shower on the wall (and ceiling!).

The surface of ceiling, walls, and floor is Skimstone, a kind of concrete skim coat that has been waterproofed and sealed. One disappointment in the process was that the various literature on how to seal it was contradictory and the stuff we ended up using started peeling off the floor almost immediately. It’s fine on all the other surfaces but not rugged enough for the floor. It’s my job to try to sand up those bubbles and peel up what wants to peel up and I put in a bit of time here and there but we might live with a mottled floor for awhile. Which is a shame because Morgan took that first week of quarantine to lay in fiber optic threads and then the Skimstone around them so we could have a floor that twinkles like the night sky. Suuuuuper fun. Still super fun even with mottling. (See video.)

We found the lockers and mirror on the Second Use website and were able to arrange curbside pickup. Then I sanded and he painted the lockers and those are our new bathroom cabinets, keeping stuff dry in the wet room. The mirror is a bit scuffed but it will do for a bit.

But the toilet paper, you want to know about the toilet paper, don’t you? Well, first of all we have a bidet seat on this new toilet of ours, which given the toilet paper shortages of the COVID-19 quarantine was well-timed. You do still need a bit to dry off with, however, since we went cheap and opted out of a bootie blow-dryer, so Morgan fabricated this little number right here:

We are still fine-tuning the details; we need a surface mount soap dispenser and somewhere to hang a hand towel, got some bottles showing up for shampoo and conditioner, etc. But check it out- we are showering and toileting behind a closed door (and not just a curtain) for the first time in years! So deluxe!

This also means we were able to remove the temporary external plumbing from our ceiling yesterday. Getting closer and closer to the norms of middle class American housing every day.

It feels to me like we have reached a new place in this adventure. Six weeks ago we dove into our isolation pods, a weird combination of the comfort of home and the discomfort of the unknown. We have waited and seen and here we are, confused, vulnerable, still waiting to see.

The very last thing that I did before lockdown was a weekend retreat called the Betwixt and Between, a deep dive into the dreaming place where logic gets turned around and something softer emerges into a larger sense of the known and unknown. Where being in the world is about feeling in the world, and the natural order of things is more heart centered.

In this place we faced our fears, and in naming them and accepting them we integrated their gifts. We dreamt a collective dream of adaptability, of song and humor and beauty and faith, of the incredible resilience of humanity as demonstrated by the terrible history of sufferings we have inflicted and endured. A powerful message emerged, one that can be summed up in M. Gandhi’s words: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Strong emphasis on BE.

I am privileged to have a comfortable place to practice BE-ing in. Indeed, my home has just become dramatically more accommodating to a stay-at-home order, years of labor having only recently paid off in a spacious, bright, freshly appointed great room that more than doubles our previous square footage. It’s spring, and we have a giant yard in which there is a lush progressive bloom I have never been quite so present for. We had some savings and are getting government help to offset the financial hit. My son is a self-directed teen whose school transitioned relatively seamlessly to online learning. I am keenly aware of the sweetness of all of this.

And yet. It is hard for me to break with the cultural programming of producing something, of doing something, of busyness and accomplishment. I am a worker bee, used to being of service and deriving much of my self-worth from that service. I have done a smattering of online healing sessions with people during this pause, and as much as I see that it helps them, it is a lifeline for this part of me. Every week I must cancel 20+ appointments on my schedule, each one a person I would be touching; it is a painful exercise.

What I choose to notice about this is that within me there is a longing for connection with others. That the grief of that longing holds the richness of all that comes with contact–all the resonance, the learning, the laughter, the tears, the fullness of being a human relating to other humans that phone calls and video chats don’t quite deliver.

Boy am I glad we have phone calls and video chats, though! One of my favorite things I have done in lockdown is attend a dance party on Zoom, where I had all the room in the world to boogie around my living room while a friend played a set of “Dancing With Myself” themed songs and I had a Brady Bunch grid of windows into other friends’ living rooms where they were doing the same. Silliness, music, movement, joy: more of that, please!

And what else do we truly want more of? As we rest into this relatively quiet place, hopefully we are listening for what our hearts really need, and as we navigate into the larger world we will allow those needs to guide us.

If this is my dream, then we are compassionate, adaptable, and kind. We are finding humor and beauty and connecting with each other. We are learning to do the unexpected and suffering less than we think we might while doing it. We are lifting up the voices of the oppressed and learning from their resilience, surrendering the dance of dominance and recognizing the genius of collaboration and cooperation. In my dream we are seeing ourselves as part of the earth, borrowed bodies with gifts to contribute. In my dream we are giving them.

Here are some things I am grateful for today:

This home, filled with light, warmth, food, people and critters I love. I especially appreciate that it is newly expanded (if unfinished) so that we can all find a corner in which to be alone if need be.

A new second toilet! With a bidet seat, so the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 is less terrifying. I will put together a blog post about the bathroom when it is more complete, as we are still working on details, but for now we have at least that going for us.

Our health, and the health of those we love. This virus took the life of an elderly student at Huck’s Kung fu school. We took a meal last week to his widow, who had also been ill but then recovered. Huck taught them both in his capacity as an advanced student, and we are very sad that this happened to them.

Our garden, which has been opening into spring in a most encouraging way. I spend at least an hour or two working out there every day, which might explain why I feel so relatively good despite the grief and anxiety of the world outside. I should say that I feel emotionally good, my low back limits me to just that hour or two with a pretty fierce reality check if I get cocky.

I am truly grateful for the spirit of connection and service that thrives in us as we forge into the unknown. I see the hard news and I see all the efforts out there to make it less hard. I have decided to offer my remote sessions free of charge to folks out there on the front lines keeping things moving for the rest of us. If you are an essential worker who is feeling the strain, it would be my honor to spend an hour with you helping your body settle into an easier place. Remote Somatic Experiencing sessions explained and available to book at http://www.bevinkeely.com.

I leave you with a bouquet from my garden. Be well, take care, much love.

Greetings from the Hammershack, where we are on day four of our isolation in an attempt to #FlattenTheCurve of the novel corona virus, Covid-19.

By order of our governor, all schools were shut down beginning Tuesday (if they hadn’t already) and for many folks that means trying to homeschool their kids. We feel very fortunate that the charter school Huck attends was uniquely set up to move to a “virtual school” model because they already issue each student a Chromebook with which they submit their projects and take tests online. This week Huck has been rolling out of bed and into his daily mentor meeting and setting goals and knocking them down without changing out of his pj’s. He seems to like it more- no bathroom pass needed!

Morgan has devoted this week to a tedious and frustrating project that should pay off with something really cool. I think I will not write about it until it’s done, but suffice it to say, you would not want to pay his hourly rate for this in your own home. Plus, it’s hell on his body, lots of bending and kneeling.

I had to make the difficult decision this week to cancel all of my appointments because what I was reading said it was the right thing to do. As of yesterday I believe the governor basically called it as well: non-essential medical procedures should be postponed. I could be carrying the disease, and so could my clients, without knowing it. Don’t want that on my conscience! For the moment I am not afraid of the loss of income; I figure the entire world is confronting this thing, there will be a way. Plus, I don’t expect the government to come after me for the money I owe in self-employment tax anytime soon, so I have a little buffer. I have done a couple of Somatic Experiencing sessions via video chat this week, which I had never done before but have now added (at a reduced rate) to my offerings on my booking site. Adaptability is key! Last night I gave Morgan a much-needed massage (see previous paragraph), and I hope to get Huck on the table this weekend.

This week it has been absolutely glorious outside. I have been out in our yard for the past three days weeding, planting, mulching, enjoying the sun. The mulching is hard work, I am scraping up rotted wood chips from the garden paths and throwing them in the planting beds. I am at this moment taking a break because, ouch! Fortunately I have a 4pm Pilates class via Zoom this evening to help me rebalance my body.

I was reminded last weekend that we exist because our ancestors survived unimaginable difficulties before us. War, hunger, disease, massive social and economic changes- people whose blood we carry endured them all. We can learn a lot from them, and we will learn a lot ourselves as we figure out what to do next. I am praying that we find ourselves capable of making some big changes we thought we couldn’t make for the sake of our ecosystems and all living things on the planet. I would love for us to come to some new reckonings with the ways we place value in our economic systems. A girl can dream.

I hope that you are all taking good care of yourselves, your families, and your communities. We are counting our blessings and sending ❤️.

We live on an arterial street that turns dramatically at our corner and heads up a long hill into a greenbelt. It means that our view is pleasant and that the whole neighborhood is aware of our project, and that people routinely crash their cars into our fence.

Since Morgan has lived here people have probably crashed at least 15-20 times, usually just one-car accidents but at least once smashing into a car heading up the hill. We have erected a big rock to try to stop the fence-smashing, and it works but has meant we’ve had to reposition the rock several times after it gets knocked over. It’s not an easy task.

Last year we placed a second big rock on the corner hoping to protect our water meter from the big trucks that were driving over it and slowly destroying it. This rock is too heavy for us to lift, but was recently dragged across the street in the process of disabling a drunk driver (who for perhaps the first time missed the turn going UP the hill), and now again this past weekend it ended up halfway down the block in another dramatic wipeout.

I heard the crash but didn’t bother to investigate because it was 4am, but the neighbors told us the person got out of their vehicle and ran, only to return because where were they going? They had hit that rock (freshly restored to its place using the truck and straps and crowbars) veered up into the planted area between our fence and the sidewalk up onto the rock wall, flipped, and landed in the street. You can see very clearly by the path of destruction through our mature plantings what happened. There were chunks of metal parts that could only have been pieces of their engine or drive train scattered among the standard auto body parts. I am grateful that they were ok, but nobody ever sticks around to help clean up or fix these messes, nobody comes back to apologize, even the cops seem not to think that the destruction might be having an impact on us. First World Problems.

In this case the water meter box had to be replaced and the meter itself fixed. We had to load up the truck with all of the dead foliage for clean green at the dump and bid farewell to bushes that had been growing for 15 years. The cedar tree Morgan started from a seedling might make it, but it was torn out by the rootball and looks a bit rough.

We find this irritating, but thankfully so far it has not been tragic. I am trying to think of it like we live in a tornado zone and we sometimes have to clean up, accept some damage, and move on. I think I will contact the department of transportation this time, and start whatever process needs to be started to try to slow folks down before someone gets seriously hurt.

In the meantime, Morgan got to use the new leaf blower he got for Christmas and the chainsaw he got for his birthday, so that was fun, and I guess we have some space for new plantings we can play with.