Eight days.  It doesn’t sound like a long time, and it didn’t sound like a long time when, while still pregnant, the Beard asked me how I felt about him going on tour with one of his bands for eight days when Pickles was about three months old.  “Fine!” I said.  “Shouldn’t be a problem.  I mean, who knows, but why not?” Ha!  Hahahahahahahaha!  Yeah right.

Now I know that five days is my approximate limit for single parentdom of a three-month-old baby.  On day five I have nothing left, so when Pickles chooses day five for an hour-long screaming marathon, I am this close to completely losing my shit.  But it is a perfect example of the “it takes a villiage” principle.  Instead of starting to scream at the top of my lungs and flail around on the bed myself, I took Pickles over to my neighbor’s Wagen where two of my friends were relaxing.  They hadn’t been with a baby non-stop for the past five days or just spent an entire day counting the minutes until Saturday.  They had patience for some screaming.  They were well-rested and had done many things involving two hands throughout the day.  I passed off Pickles and went back to my Wagen, where I finally did throw myself on the bed to squeeze out a few tears and talk to the Beard on the telephone.

It only strengthened my resolve to give all single parents total ultimate hero status.  Seriously, how do you people do it??!?!  You are amazing, and I bow down in humble awe of your abilities.  Where do you find the patience?  How do you deal with the fact that after an impossible day, you still don’t get a break and have to get up again the next day and keep going?  Have you even brushed your teeth in, like, years?  May the universe shower you with wealth and attrative, loving partners, and rainbows and kittens and eternal happiness.

I had always wanted to spend time outside of the United States, but I hadn’t wanted to do it by spending a college semester abroad.  I loved my school, and I felt like spending a semester somewhere else would be a waste of a chunk of the only time that I would ever spend there.  I would go abroad later, I said, once I’m finished studying and on my own terms.  From the sounds of it semesters abroad were a lot more about drinking, avoiding classwork but getting credit for it anyway, and completely failing at mixing with any locals, and those weren’t my terms at all.

After a year of proofreading, I also knew that 9-5 corporate work wasn’t for me.  Everything I read, everything I thought—it was all pointing to one inevitability.  I had to quit, and I had to go do something that would give credit to the short years of my life.  Back then I had detailed plans about spending a year in France (where I would learn French so that I could take the UN translator’s exam and get a job that probably sounded a lot more interesting than it actually was), but I didn’t really have any savings to speak of—all of my extra cash had gone into paying off my loans.  So instead of planning a care-free, job-free year abroad, I started looking for jobs in Europe.  I threw resumes at everything that moved, and when the government didn’t take me (thank cod), an au pair agency did.

The decision to move to Germany to spend a year au pairing for some rich family’s brats (you can read all about them here, by the way) may be the only decision I’ve ever made that inspired vocal doubt in my mother.  But after she briefly stated her concerns (that au pairing was “below” me, by which I assume she meant “a really stupid career choice for someone who just spent over $100,000 for a college education”), she never mentioned it again.  And look at me now, ma.  Still in Germany seven years later, a kid, a husband, and a job doing something I love, something that is even related to what I studied.  It’s not what you expect from the front-end of an au pairing job.  I didn’t know it then, but it was the first baby step in the direction of what Shannon Hayes refers to as “reclaiming” in her book Radical Homemakers.  In case you missed the quote the first time I posted it:

RECLAIMING: In the second stage, the “reclaiming” period, Radical Homemakers were recovering the many skills that enabled them to build a life without a conventional income.  This “phase” can take a few years or a lifetime, and homemakers will perpetually return to it as they build even more skills.  Initially, this is an exciting and tremendously fulfilling period, as people regain their self-reliance.  Interestingly, if the homemakers dwelled only in this realm for too long, they began to manifest some symptoms of Friedan’s housewife’s syndrome—maliase, feeling lost, aimless, or occasionally depressed, or wondering “what’s this all for?”

Though my year au pairing didn’t leave me with any skills that would enable me to live without money, it was a year of exploration.  I oscillated between the doldrums (an unavoidable part of the start of expatdom) and inspiration born of more reading.  I put together a zine called These are our weapons, which I never got around to photocopying and distributing (you can read some of the words meant for those pages in the zine graveyard), but which centered around the idea that our weapons in this fight against everything that felt wrong could be spoons and pens, paint brushes and sewing needles.  Radical Homemakers would have blown me into next week if I had read it back then; it was exactly the wavelength I was just starting to find my footing on.  I became interested in the little messages spread across the walls of the city through graffiti and rain-wrinkled flyers.

When I decided to stay in Germany, I got a job (teaching English) that would allow me to pay my bills with only about 20 hours of work a week.  I dumpster dived constantly, and I continued to suck in inspiration by way of the printed page.  Living My Life by Emma Goldman.  Days of War Nights of Love by CrimethInc.  Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky.  And so many more.  I prefered drinking a 30 cent beer in the park to going to a bar, though I did plenty of both.  I rode my bike everywhere.  I learned how to build a tall bike.  I was in love with life and enjoying every single second of it.  No corporate job was going to steal another minute of my all-too-short time to enjoy life as Nicolette Stewart.  It was another small step.

the real thing

There are some moments you are simply happy to be alive. I find these occur more frequently when you’re living your life outside. My sister lives in a wagenplatz. I won’t go into detail because she explains it herself here. But picture the Boxcar Children and you’re well on your way. When you’re living in a wagen the weather becomes of utmost importance. It was rather cold when I was there, and that mostly means heating with a wood stove. While I did finally learn the secret of lighting the woodstove (thank god for matches, because I’m horrible with lighters), you don’t always feel like lighting it, or you won’t be there for very long, and this leads to heating with candles. It had never really occurred to me that you could heat with candles, but duh, fire.

The first night the wood stove was lit, and I snuggled into bed with a comforter and read by candlelight. It’s actually about the same level of light as a bedside lamp, if you do it proper. And it feels infinitely more cozy. More real, somehow, more true. You have to watch that they don’t burn all the way down, and somehow, that increased level of attentiveness makes you feel all the more alive—that, and the occasional pops from the woodstove, and the rain beating against the roof.

Because of the small space, many things are done outside, or at least in another wagen. It’s a walk to the bathroom, which is the only thing that can sometimes be a pain in the ass when it’s warm inside from the woodstove and you just don’t feel like putting clothes on…

Otherwise you just wait for the weather. For the sun to dry your clothes, a clear day for chopping wood, a warm one for washing dishes. I can’t use my phone here and there’s no clock so I never have any idea what time it is, which can be a blessing and a curse. When time is irrelevant, all you have to go by is the weather. And when it’s raining, you wake when the rain starts making enough noise, and schedule your day around when you can manage to get outside without getting wet.

To go about dishwashing, you start by hauling a tub full of water from the tap. If you’re me you attempt to do this all in one go and get fairly wet. You set the washtub on the porch or somewhere similarly elevated (because wagens have wheels, doors, and thus porches, are 2-3’ off the ground) And then you go about it all in the usual way—wash, rinse, set out to dry. We handwash all our dishes at home, so it’s not a big chore, but it’s different outside, wagen door open, Florence and the Machine blaring. You notice things. Birds watch you work, and there’s a snail in the ivy under the tree. A leaf falls in the washtub. Like reading by candlelight, it somehow feels right, and more real than being indoors with a faucet. You use biodegradable soap, and when you’re done you dump it in the weeds, which are actually nettles and henbit and ivy and other useful plants.

A perfect moment, an immense feeling of satisfaction, having done a job well while standing in the sun. More alive than I’ve felt in ages, I can finally hear my thoughts again, and they are full of quiet and the snail and the song of the kohlmeise who has been watching me all along.

There are going to be some changes when I get home.

This post was originally published here.

The war started with a bruise. Franci became a bitchy little snot in a matter of hours, twisted my skin until it turned black when I told her it was bedtime, and ran screaming into the “kids’ disco” across from the clubhouse

The disco was set up like a regular disco, but with lower tables and non-alcoholic drinks. I walked slowly in after her, counting, breathing deeply, doing anything I could to keep the rage in my head and out of my hands.

“Franci, what you just did really hurt my feelings. We’re going to go back to the room now, come on.” That’s what I had planned on saying. But when she saw me across the room she screamed, “Asshole, stupid asshole, I hate you!”

I turned around and left without a word. The situation was beyond my control; I needed to get mom and dad involved or I was going to break into a thousand little pieces that no one would ever be able to put back together.

Jens and Janet were sitting at a round table in the dining room with Franci’s new friend’s parents, eating fresh dates and drinking wine. My voice was shaking as I held out my arm and explained what had just happened. “Do you see that? Your daughter just did that to me. Then she ran into the disco, and as soon as I walked in the door she screamed and called me a stupid asshole. She won’t listen to me. I need one of you to step in.” Jens threw down his napkin, disgusted.

“I’ll take care of it,” he assured me, “Meet me back at the room.”

I could hear Franci’s howls from across the resort. Jens had her by the ear and was dragging her down the path. “You acted despicably tonight. If you don’t cut it out I’m sending you home on the next plane all by yourself.” She screamed louder. “Do you want to go home by yourself?” She screamed louder still. I stood waiting at the door, and he dragged her in past me and ordered her into pajamas and bed.

When Franci refused to talk to me the next morning, Janet suggested I ignore her. I was glad for the break, but ignoring someone who doesn’t want to have anything to do with you in the first place seemed like an ineffectual strategy. Fuck it. And then there was one.

With Franci out of the way—she now spent her time with her new friend James, and since James went to the Dolphin Club, so did she—Franz Joseph was easier to handle. With two there was always one who didn’t want to do whatever I suggested which meant that in the end we did nothing but sit in the hotel room: them hypnotized by Greek television, me staring longingly at the beach out of the terrace window.

Joseph preferred the heated pool to the beach, so one afternoon we joined the older Cole children there for a swim. In the deep pool I insisted that he put on his swimmies. He screamed. I insisted again. So he hocked a big lugey and spit in my face. I picked him up like a surf-board, slung the beach bag over my shoulder and carried him kicking and crying back to the hotel room. Fuck the Mediterranean, fuck Cyprus, fuck all-expenses paid. Now I understood Aldiana’s other motto, the one that was constantly being sung on the television commercials, “Back to the place you’re longing for.” I couldn’t wait to go home.

I’ve talked a little, here and there, about how my life used to be pre-Wagenplatz and post 9-5 job.  I’ve talked about how I used to wear make-up and shower obsessively.  Hell, there was a time in my life when I loved air conditioning and concrete and considered shopping a pasttime.  Though I barely recognize that person in myself anymore, being that person was an important part of getting to the person I am today.  Some people talk like change is negative.  “You’ve changed,” they’ll say.  And their tone will imply that you’ve become something much worse.  But more often than not, changes are good for the people involved.  Even if they aren’t always good for other members of those past lives.

I have wanted to share more of how that transition happened for a while now.  But yesterday’s quote from Shannon Hayes’ book Radical Homemakers inspired me to tell the story now, in context of the stages she identifies as leading people into radical homemaking.  Let me repeat the part of the quote that I will talk about today, the first step in her three-step ladder, here for you now:

RENOUNCING: In this first stage, the Radical Homemaker is increasingly aware of the illusory happiness of a consumer society.  They recognize and question the pressures and compulsion to purchase goods and services that they begin to feel they could provide for themselves “if only…”  This stage is marked by growing introspection, doubting the ultimate worth of their careers, identifying their true sources of contentment, and seeking better alignment of their pesonal values with their life’s trajectory.

For this Gorilla, it started with books.  Most things do with me.  These books were about anarchism.  During my senior year of college, a year that left me feeling utterly broken and in need of a long break from all things academic, I read The Disposessed by Ursula Le Guin, as well as The Alexander Berkman Reader.  Though I can’t remember if that was the year that I read the anonymously authored CrimethInc book Eviction, I do remember it being the year when I dumpster-dived food for the first time.  We were so up to our ears in Panera bread that year that we used to have baguette swordfights in the kitchen.  Too bad I hadn’t seen this back then, though (for the non-German speakers, it’s a list of 130 recipes for turning old bread into something tasty).  It felt like the beginning of my own personal revolution, though I’m sure it had begun long ago in little personality traits and whispers and preferences.  Who I have become today has always felt like an arrival at a long-expected point, like it was the trajectory everything was always leading up to.  These days, when someone accuses me of having changed, I smile and say “Thank cod.”

Despite my budding interest in the radical, I plunged into a 9-5 desk job proofreading two weeks after graduation.  I had college loans to pay off, and, well, getting a job after college was just was you did, wasn’t it?  Though I had spent hours looking into various programs teaching English abroad, it was the debt that convinced me to take the job.  I can’t remember the feeling, but I must have felt lucky to have actually found something in my field immediately.  And I suppose the experience was interesting in its way.

But it was also stressful, and it made me unhappy.  I spent evenings running off my aggression at the gym, and while I was in the best shape of my life physically because of it, emotionally I was teetering.  Teetering but disciplined.  I had a tight budget (I don’t even remember this, but dear Jill reminded me of it recently), I only let myself drink on weekends (I’m glad I now live in a country where beer isn’t one of the easiest things to cut out of your life if you want to save a lot of money in a hurry), and I made double and triple payments on my loans whenever I could.  The extreme thrift added to my misery from time to time, but in the end it opened the door.  I paid off my debt ($10,000) in one year and decided to take a job au pairing in Germany.  Take that corporate life, take that.

In order to save, I’d had to practice my thrift, something I’d already learned a lot about from my mother (who had fostered in me a love of yard and rummage sales at an early age).  This collided with my emerging political sense.  I bet that movie Fight Club even had its part to play.  Point was, I was noticing that I had too much stuff, bought too much stuff, and that I was the none the happier for any of it.  My path to simplicity started small.  “I will never buy another pair of pajamas or purse again.”  It was the beginning of a long journey to make my life about something other than moving objects from one place to another.  Slowly I identified things I was spending money on that I didn’t really need, and I stopped buying them.  And I still haven’t bought a purse or pair of pajamas.

Books, purses, and pajamas.  Where did it start for you?  Are any of you going through this right now?

“RENOUNCING: In this first stage, the Radical Homemaker is increasingly aware of the illusory happiness of a consumer society.  They recognize and question the pressures and compulsion to purchase goods and services that they begin to feel they could provide for themselves “if only…”  This stage is marked by growing introspection, doubting the ultimate worth of their careers, identifying their true sources of contentment, and seeking better alignment of their pesonal values with their life’s trajectory.

RECLAIMING: In the second stage, the “reclaiming” period, Radical Homemakers were recovering the many skills that enabled them to build a life without a conventional income.  This “phase” can take a few years or a lifetime, and homemakers will perpetually return to it as they build even more skills.  Initially, this is an exciting and tremendously fulfilling period, as people regain their self-reliance.  Interestingly, if the homemakers dwelled only in this realm for too long, they began to manifest some symptoms of Friedan’s housewife’s syndrome—maliase, feeling lost, aimless, or occasionally depressed, or wondering “what’s this all for?”

REBUILDING: Those homemakers who seemed most satisfied and committed to their life choices over the long haul had entered a “rebuilding phase.”  In this period, they took on genuine creative challenges, tended toward engagement with their communities, and made significant contributions toward rebuilding a new society that reflected their vision of a better world either through artwork, writing, farming, fine craftwork, social reform, activism, teaching, or a small business.”

-Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes

Even though I don’t can, don’t farm, barely even grow a few herbs (it’s looking like I won’t be doing a garden this year, although all of the garlic I planted last year and mourned came back in triplicate this year), hell, I’m not even the cook in the family, but the more of Radical Homemakers I read, the more I realize it could be a good description of my life.  Maybe there’s a little Radical Homemaker in all of us.  Where are you on her trajectory?

(If Pickles gives me enough typing time tonight maybe I’ll even get around to writing some things about what each of these stages have been like for me.  This quote provides a neat framework within which I could examine bits of the journey of my last seven years.)

Au pairing isn’t a highly paid job, and The German Man dictates earnings: a 285 euro monthly stipend and at least one day off each week. The benefits are nestled between the lines—in the room, board, and health insurance the family is required to provide—and between work days, when the rich German matriarch announces one morning that you will be accompanying the family on their vacation to Cyprus.

A four-hour flight brought us from Frankfurt International to Larnaka International, and taxis brought us to the Aldiana resort where we’d be staying. The family, Janet informed me, would be staying in a suite located on the edge of the resort. The twins and I would be sharing a room just between the main clubhouse and the beach. I was not keen on completely dissolving the work/play boundary I meticulously maintained at home, but was willing to ignore the contractual breech in exchange for an all-expense-paid island getaway.

Aldiana is the German answer to Club Med. Book a vacation at an Aldiana resort and you can relax in a walled complex far from the messy cultural details of whatever country you are visiting (an irrelevant detail!) and socialize with your compatriots in your native tongue. I suppose this is the reason that the club motto is “a vacation with friends.” (Translation: “a vacation with other rich white people.”)

The Aldiana pamphlet says: “ALDIANA Zypern is perfect for everyone—singles, young couples, young children, and teens. The resort comprises a wide variety of sports, relaxation, and entertainment, all set amidst the beautiful coastal flora and fauna of Cyprus.”

Here another translation is needed: Aldiana Cyprus is perfect for everyone with money and for everyone too worried about security and/or xenophobic to bother with the actual country and people of Cyprus. Aldiana Cyprus is also perfect for people who think they would enjoy the “beautiful coastal flora and fauna of Cyprus” but aren’t actually prepared to deal with a desert climate.

But there is little that nature can do that Aldiana (cough, civilization) can’t take care of. And so dozens of hoses snaked the resort lawn, irrigating the Aldiana palms and the sparse Aldiana grass. As for the fauna, the poisonous spiders that would otherwise be inhabiting the landscape, an employee told us, are kept at bay with regular doses of insecticide sprayed across the entire property. Coastal flora and fauna indeed.

Greek travel propaganda had led me to believe that we’d be laying on white- sand beaches, but the beaches of Cyprus are gray, unspectacular in compar- ison perhaps, but beautiful and exotic to eyes accu- stomed to Jersey shore. That first day the twins put on their swimmies, I waded into the Mediterranean for the first time, and it was as glorious as it probably sounds.

In my former life I had been vaguely aware that resorts like Aldiana existed, but I don’t think I really believed in them. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny they were just pleasant little myths that worked well on television. Real people wouldn’t actually visit them. Why would they want to? You could save yourself time and money and travel to the German coast to the same effect.

The employees—sailing and diving instructors, bartenders and babysitters—were all generically good looking and insistently pleasant. If you passed an employee on the way to the beach he or she would smile and say hello. Always friendly, always polite. Failure to do so, I imagined, earned you a flogging from the boss. And that might ruin your tan. I imagined that nights they let out steam in the employee lounge, out of sight of paying guests, Dirty Dancing style. Welcome to the Aldiana bubble: polite, friendly, safe, pleasant, plastic.

If you were tired of tanning, you could take diving and sailing lessons, if you were tired of the Mediterranean you could take a dip in the heated indoor pool, and if you got tired of taking care of your children, you could send them to the Dolphin Clubhouse—the resort’s day care service. Jens, always wanting to play good cop, had promised me that the twins would spend the entire day there, leaving me free to do what I pleased. The reality was that the twins didn’t want to go to the Dolphin Club. They wanted to spend time with their siblings and their parents, and instead they were stuck with me.

I hadn’t realized.  But having kids makes you realize so many things, and what I’ve been particularly focused on realizing lately is how much, how seriously very very much, what we eat affects us.  I mean, I knew that.  Sort of.  You are what you eat, right?  And so I try to make sure I am not an enormous vat of white sugar, Frankenstein plants, antibiotics, pesticides, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

But did you know that what we eat and how we eat it can change the way we look?  Not in a “he’s fat and she’s thin” sort of way, but in a fundamental “this is the shape of my jaw” sort of way.  For example, if you breastfeed, your baby’s jaw will develop differently than if you don’t (or if you don’t for very long).  And of course a lack of various nutrients (or the presense of various detrimental substances) can result in smaller people, smarter people, allergic people, and on and on.  Realizing this as I’m watching Baby Pickles grow has shown me how much more of what we eat we really are.  So much more than I ever really was able to wrap my head around.  Everything.  Everything.

Which is why breastfeeding Baby Pickles for as long as it is mutually acceptable for both of us is so important to me.  Which is why I was hoping to never have to give her a drop of formula.  But, whoops, too late.  As I have mentioned here and here.

The first time I fed Baby Pickles formula was a Saturday.  After a week of up-and-down weights that ended with a cumulative gain of either absolutely nothing or a 20 gram loss, depending on which scale you were willing to believe, I didn’t want to wait any longer (it is taking all my self control not to make a wait-weight pun here, badabing!).  I still wasn’t convinced that the problem was that my body wasn’t producing enough milk, couldn’t produce enough milk, but I didn’t want Pickles’ health to suffer for it in the meantime.

More worrisome to me had been the thought of having to give Pickles a bottle.  Because babies don’t have to suck as hard on a bottle to get at the milk, they often start to prefer the bottle to the breast.  And ruck-zuck, as they say in German, you’ve got yourself a baby who refuses to breastfeed.  I wanted to give Pickles as much breast milk as I could—the stuff is pure magic I tell you—and so I didn’t want to run that risk.  That’s where the supplemental feeding contraption came in.

A supplemental feeder is a kind of spacey device designed for just this purpose.  It consists of a plastic bottle that you wear, upside down, on a string around your neck.  Two tiny tubes are attached to the head of the bottle, and these you tape onto your nipples so that the end of the tube sticks out just slightly more than the nipple itself.  First you let your baby drink breast milk, and when you’re empty, you open up the tube and let her drink formula.  That way she only drinks as much formula as she really needs, and she still has to suck just as hard to get it.  I.e. laziness doesn’t come in and ruin your breastfeeding relationship, and you don’t have to think too much about how much milk you’re giving her.  She gets to decide.  Another pro for the supplemental feeder.

So we started with one bottle a day.  In two days Pickles had gained 130 grams (about what she had gained per week previously). Using the contraption was pretty easy, and Pickles drank about half of each bottle offered to her.  Then she drank the whole bottle, slurping the last sips with that straw-at-the-bottom-of-the-soda-cup noise.  Then we offered her two bottles a day.  Now we’re back to one, which she is only drinking half of.  If there is any information to be gleaned from this (non) pattern, I don’t know what it is.  I am glad, however, that it appears the problem lies with me and not with her.  *Cue more detective work.*  Because I’m still not willing to believe this is an unsolvable issue.

About a week into formula feeding, a good friend with a nine-month-old baby gave me a call.  She knew about my milk problem, had been with me to La Leche League meetings, even lived in a Bauwagen herself.  “I had an idea,” she said.  “Why don’t I just pump milk for you to give to Pickles?  I have more than enough.”

I grinned.  “Really?  You would do that?!  I have to admit the idea had already occured to me, but I didn’t ask you about it because I thought you might think it was weird.  Or too much work.”

“No, I mean I don’t want to do it forever since I want to get rid of my milk eventually,” she went on, “but if you’re only giving her one bottle a day that should be no problem.  As long as I don’t have to clean the pump.”

And so Baby Pickles got her own wet nurse (technically it’s a milk share since she’s not feeding at another breast, but tomato, tomatoe).  There are a lot of people out in internet land who seem to find the concept horrifying, disgusting, wrong.  But to me it feels natural.  What would someone with a milk supply problem have done 200 years ago?  1. Not been freaked out by worried doctors obsessed with charts.  2. Not had her baby constantly weighed.  3. Probably only noticed a weight issue if it was very very serious.  And then 4. Looked for a wet nurse, if she could afford it, or cross nursing with a mother friend.  Did you know that royal ladies only nursed their first-born children?  It was part of the whole “you are marked for greatness” spiel.  Everybody else got farmed out to a wet nurse.  The history of wet nursing is kind of fascinating.  As is the fact that it appears to be quietly reappearing in many people’s lives today.  Having a friend willing to share her milk with my baby makes my little community feel even tighter, more supportive and magical and healthy.

Unfortunately, our milk sharing hasn’t worked out quite so idyllically.  First of all, preparing bottles sucks.  SUCKS.  I keep my Wagen relatively neat, but I am not in the habit of washing anything—be it dishes, my body, or a bottle—every single day.  And with baby bottles you have to wash the damn thing, then you have to sterilize the damn thing, and then you have to warm the damn food up (if using the formula, to a boil), and then you have to wait for the damn stuff to cool to just the right tempurature.  And hope that Baby Pickles is still even interested at that point.  Or hasn’t been torturing you for an hour with heart-rending screams of agony.

Every time I make a bottle, I find myself wondering why anyone would choose this feeding option because “it is  more convenient.”  My ass it is.  Breastfeeding: no washing involved!  A quickly moved shirt and—bam!—you’re rolling!  So there’s the irritation of washing the pump and the bottle.  Add to that trying to meet up with said friend, who only lives a kilometer away, every day for her to pump, at a time when both of our babies aren’t screaming and hers, preferrably, is sleeping (she gets jealous about the pump being on her milk tap).

But despite the difficulties that lie in the logistics of such an arrangement, it’s not the reason that Pickles is still getting mostly formula.  Nope, that’s because she had horrible screaming fits of intestinal (we assume) agony every time she received our friend’s milk.  So either our friend is eating something Pickles’ can’t stomach, or the make-up of the milk (which is currenlty tuned for our friend’s nine-month-old baby) is just too hard for her almost-three-month-old stomach to digest.  Looks like we’ve got detective work on every front.

Sheets and blankets and towels don’t make for good headlines.  But from them I built my comfy sleeping nest (well, not the towels), and my comfy sleeping nest is pretty much the most important place in my little house.  Because we live so tiny (our main dwelling being 7 meters by 2,20 meters for those of you just tuning in), our bed tends to serve as both bed, couch, and living room.  When I’m inside, I’m usually hanging out on the bed.

I’ve written about the bed in my Wagen before, about how I built it out of dumpstered materials, got a mattress from a friend, and then clothed it in dumpster-dived pillows, sheets, and blankets.  And the bed in our main Wagen is pretty much the same deal.  Though the main frame was in it when we moved in, the extension that we added to make it huge (so Baby Pickles could sleep in it with us) was largely dumpstered and the mattress extension was cut out of a bit of foam headed for the trash.

Though I haven’t been checking the trash across the street so often for booty (and the university changed the type of trash cans there, which makes for slightly more work for the diver), I still managed to find one of the recurrent “bed bundles” this season.  What is a bed bundle?  Well, it’s when a student, for no reason I can ascertain, takes the fitted sheet off of their bed, wraps all of the rest of their bed clothes in it (blankets pillows etc) and then tosses it as-is in the trash.  It blows my mind every time I find one, and over the years I’ve found quite a few, and it is the reason that all (with three exceptions, one from a flea market and two old fitted sheets from my mom) of my sheets, the sheets (and towels) that you see in that photo, are from the trash.

As usual, thanks to the wasteful students!  (But really?)  How ironic (is this actual irony?  I have never bothered to really hammer the true definition of that word into my head) that I profit from the same waste that frustrates me so.  Oh those twisted webs.