Follow Your Bliss Over the Cliff

I just watched the first half hour or so of a well-known motivational speaker's program on PBS in which he placed great emphasis on following your bliss and going after your dream, which makes me think about my own little dusty dream, and how it's even more important to me now than it was when I was ten years old, when it was more about having a pony and living in one house forever and never having to change schools four times in one year again than anything else.  

Cob Cottage

The way the world is moving, toward a more conservative, hateful, ever widening gap between rich and poor I want what I wanted when I was ten even more, a small piece of land, a half-acre to an acre in size, where we can build a small - very small - house. Granted the dream house is different now than it was 59 years ago, but times have changed since then. I'd say 500-600 sq feet would be plenty if it's designed properly. I'd install solar panels and a small wind turbine for power. A stream or a drilled well, the use of composting toilets, and recycling of our grey water through a living marsh would insure we could live off the grid.  

The house would have to be wheelchair accessible so Tony can get through the doors and in and out of the bathroom and into the shower and out again safely. I want a room with windows facing south we can use as sunroom/greenhouse so I can grow greens year-round, and where Tony can work on his models, I can paint, sew and do yoga, and we can  sit in the sun in the winter. This apt faces north and we never see the sun at all. Our balcony doesn't even get sun. 

We'll need thick, heavily insulated walls and ceiling, so we can heat with a rocket stove and a back-up propane stove. A wide overhang and a porch for spring, summer and fall evenings. A raised bed garden, so  I can grow all the fresh vegetables we love to eat. Fruit trees, a hive of bees,  a half dozen chickens for eggs. A run for the cats, and a tree for them to climb.  

Our problem (aside from the lack of money) is that, because of health issues, we have to be within a short distance from a town with a hospital. In Canada that limits our choices. We also want to be somewhere where the winter is not quite so brutal as it is in Calgary, so we're looking at going back to BC. 

As I sit here the neighbour down the hall has fired up his nightly bonfire of marijuana again. I swear it's GMO and crossed with skunk musk, and it makes me so sick I could just cry. We put a big towel and a rug under the door, but we can't keep his smoke from invading our place. 

So I dream. If you have an envelope lying around which contains oh, say $100,000 in it, we could probably come up with some of the money by selling this place when the mortgage comes up for renewal, but it won't be nearly enough. And my bliss is losing heart. What's his face on the TV said just do it, but if I start digging holes and pouring a foundation on someone else's land I'm either gonna end up in jail or the loony bin, and since they closed the loony bin  to save money I'd end up in jail. And that isn't a part of my bliss at all. So I'll just keep dreaming and you think about that envelope.