good morning!

A friend who lives on 40 acres near Safford (2-1/2 hours away) came to town last night, caravanning (sp?) with the couple who have agreed to caretake her property for the next 'however long'....she is planning to satellite/relocate to Harbin Hot Springs, and wanted to make sure her place was occupied and worked. She's got a bunch of fruit trees and an organic garden and a couple of kitties to take care of. She's off the grid, solar-powered, and her place is great with 2 yurts and the "kitchen bus" (which is an old school bus that has the fridge and stove in it). She and her ex-oldman put a lot of time, effort, and money into making everything solar, but they did it. There's a nice sweat lodge and bath house as well, with an "on-demand" hot water heater that runs on propane....you can take a hot shower for as long as your fuel lasts!

It's a sweet place to be if you don't need to go make money somewhere, and/or have the skills to grow your dinner. And this couple she found has a lot of organic gardening experience, so down the road I'm hoping she/they will offer shares in the garden. I buy organic wherever possible, but unfortunately have a brown (if not black) thumb when it comes to gardening, or I'd be turning my back yard into my own salad garden!

She found these folks through some kind of Caretaker Classifieds....they are from Virginia, and this is their first experience of the desert, I think. So all of them parked/camped here last night in my yard (and Angus got a whole new set of temporary chew toys!). I love the hippie connection; I'm aligned with, but not engulfed by it. She wanted to give them an introduction to Tucson's rainbow community, so there was a dance-jam type event last night and then this morning is one day that the local sweat lodge is open to the public. She's taking them there as well as on a tour of some of the local health-food grocery stores.

I'm happy to open my home to people on a temporary basis, knowing first hand about living out of town and how nice it is to have a base of operations for those extended town trips. It was a "good meet" and I hope they will feel comfortable using me as a resource in the future.

Arizona was the first place I'd ever been where I saw folks living however they pleased out in the middle of nowhere, and I liked it. I still like it a lot, and tried it myself for 7-1/2 years in a "community" about an hour away from Maggie's Farm, but found that I'm not quite handy enough on my own to be able to live that way. And it's a hell of a reason to have a man, just b/c I don't have the skills I needed to haul/fix/make whatever on my own. So, given those facts, I decided that I was better off living in the city and visiting the country instead of the other way around.

The other plain fact is that I love what I do, which is massage therapy, which means I need a certain size population to make it my sole source of income. I kept it as a 'side job' for many years, and finally decided I was ready to try it full-time and found that I love it, it loves me; we're a happy couple!

The best way to stop working is to love what you do, and that's just the truth....

In a little while another friend is coming over to give me a Jin Shin Jyutsu treatment, then I'm taking her to lunch as a belated birthday present. Ahhh, Sundays!

ciao for now!