If Wishes Were Houses, We Wouldn't Live in a Trailer

I bought the property now known as MisFit Farm over three years ago, wholly intending to build a house on it. In the meantime, there was a trailer on the property, which for the likes of Coffee-dog and me was quite all right. A few months ago, one of the Dane rescue people, desperate to find a placement for a foster baby, asked, “aren’t you done building your house yet?!?!”

“The house” has taken on a number of iterations. I have been encouraged to build a sod house, an A-frame, a berm home, a kit home, a straw bale home, just about everything except a toilet home. Before I realized the joys of mass animal care, I had entertained the notion of a total do-it-myself home building project. When K joined me in the planning phases, we spent hours poring over home design books and floorplans. We made lists of “must-haves,” “like-to-haves,” and “absolutely not’s.” We thought we had decided upon the perfect design. Then came the Danes. And not just Danes. Danes with disabilities.

The summer before last, I was sharing some bonding time with my mother in a brief car ride. She confided in me that she had a terrible fear that in ten years, I would still be living in this trailer, only I would have ten dogs living here with me. I encouraged her to find other more important things to worry about like ice caps melting, world hunger or genocide. Shortly after this conversation, the dog count hit five, and a mere year later, we have crossed the halfway mark on the “feared number of dogs” count to bring our total to five-plus-one-more. I certainly hope the alternative fears my mother agreed to take on have gone better. We may have to call her off the whole ice caps melting thing lest Kansas become the new Galveston.

Always ones to look upon the brighter side of life and in an effort to not appear lazy, indecisive or unmotivated, we believe that this additional time has provided us with an opportunity to reconsider how we (meaning both bi-peds and the dogs) will live in a house. Thanks to this additional time, we have come to appreciate what a complete inconvenience the presence of things like hallways would be in our home. We have had time to think through the design of a “dog room,” plumbing configurations, appropriate furniture and doorway placements, home entry strategies, safety features and storage needs.

As you can clearly see, the planning process and what will hopefully soon be our final descent into the actual event of homebuilding has taken quite a bit out of my already truncated attention span. So we hope all will bear with us as we are perhaps a bit less frequent in our posting. Once the house is completed, we promise to throw a big virtual party for all to join.

In any event, one of these days very soon, we will have the perfect home for our not-so-perfect krewe. Hopefully before MisFit Farm becomes beachfront property.