The Miscreant Zone

Well, we have another “Grid Is For Squares Unplugged” this week… a little shorter, a little less edited than other episodes in the past. Vince and I have been so busy lately and I know everyone understands.

The podcast I was recently hired to produce professionally, The Suburban Women Problem, cracked Apple Podcasts’ Top 200 in its first week, which has been a strange and interesting and extremely stressful ride. But SWP is a political podcast with high-level guests like Chasten Buttigieg and this is a totally different beast… weird, small, and very personal. I’m fine with The Grid Is For Squares never topping any charts or getting any press—in fact, I prefer it that way. But if you are here and you have been traveling with us on this journey, thanks. We’re glad you’re here.

So while I’ve been doing that, Vince has been living up on our property with his mom and his brother Morey, just like he has since the beginning of April. Most of this episode is him updating everyone on what they’ve been up to—myself included, since I haven’t been there.

On that note, our separation has been getting harder. For the first month, it didn’t bother me that much… I had the stress of starting a new job, and there are some things about living alone that I do like, but these past 2 weeks of separation were tougher for both of us. We’re trying to make the most of the time we do have together and thinking about how we can structure our lives so we can both do our own thing but not spend too much time apart.

But let’s get to what Vince, Morey, and Judy have been doing on the property! As always, it’s easy to start projects and difficult to finish them. The greenhouse is almost done… they cast all the concrete bricks for the perimeter and installed them around 3 of the 4 sides. The shower now has more regulated temperature control, but still needs a better enclosure. And Morey has started building a shed so that hopefully soon, Judy can get rid of her storage unit. Finally, Vince built a new (much bigger) humanure composting station from wooden pallets. Hopefully this new compost station will last us a year or two.

The biggest news is that the yurt platform is ready to go, since Vince & co installed the drip edge and the finished bamboo flooring this month. They started with an underlayment called QuietWalk and then laid down tongue-and-groove bamboo flooring. Because bamboo expands and contracts more than most woods, they stuck the skinny end of a shim between each board as they went to give it a little more space to expand without cracking. Our research tells us that bamboo, while cheap and sustainable, isn’t ideal for outdoor applications because of this predilection for expansion. But bamboo was one of the only options in our budget and, like everything, this is an experiment. We’ll see how it goes!

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I’ll finally be back on our property over Memorial Day weekend… setting up our yurt! Hopefully next episode, you’ll be able to hear about (and see pictures of) our finished and functional yurt.

P.S. “The Miscreant Zone” is what Vince calls the shady area behind the greenhouse. I didn’t know what to call this episode and that made me laugh, so now it’s the title. That’s TGIFS Unplugged for ya, baby.