Tossing Words at the Wall

Still terrible at blogging.

2017-10-18T23:16:00.001-04:00

I really should update this page more often. So many thoughts, so many things to say.

Our old house sold, and January has been a busy month!

2016-01-29T18:05:00.000-05:00

Once again, slacking on my blogging duties....

2015-12-17T12:21:00.001-05:00

Finished Doors....

2015-11-30T07:50:00.002-05:00

Spent a day Thanksgiving weekend staining the exterior doors before the rain set in for several days. I (Fred) had never used colored stain before, and I am very pleased at how the "Alligator Washed" green door!

More Tiny House Photo Updates

2015-11-28T10:47:00.003-05:00

I have not been a dutiful blogger....

2015-10-31T08:01:00.003-04:00

I wanted to blog regularly about our progress, but even though those helping us with this are working much harder than I am/can...it's exhausting. Photodumps seem a more realistic use of my time and energy. Hopefully I will blog more about individual projects in the home once the pace slows after Solstrøm is "dried in".

Been a busy week....

2015-10-17T07:21:00.000-04:00

Oh, this thing is happening....

2015-10-09T05:42:00.003-04:00

We bought all the windows we'll need for the cabin today for under $500 from a local construction outreach. They are great windows of various sizes and all matching vinyl energy star windows. Our concrete is being poured in a few days, and our septic system perc'd and was approved by the health department for week after next. Things are starting to come together.

More updates soon....

2015-10-02T11:08:00.000-04:00

More updates are coming, I promise. We had a construction delay called $1000 for concrete footers. Our old house is in the process of selling, but we've not gotten to closing yet.

We received a gift!

2015-09-23T11:14:00.003-04:00

Much love to my West Coast friend. Gifts are wonderful.

Measuring for the trenches....

2015-09-05T18:03:00.001-04:00

Day 2, Foundation digging....

2015-09-03T15:23:00.000-04:00

Ground's been broken!

2015-09-01T22:29:00.000-04:00

Footers soon....

2015-08-31T20:30:00.000-04:00

We'll be moving in a few days, and hopefully things will get a move on. We plan to start on the footers and foundation soon. Of course, the sooner the sale of our current house closes...the sooner it's full steam ahead on the Itty Bitty Cabin Homestead.

Early site prep...

2015-08-17T18:23:00.000-04:00

While we've been at our current house attempting to sell it, my father has been hard at work getting the cabin site prepped for ground breaking. More to come soon....

Early Site Selection and Design Ideas

2015-08-09T22:26:00.002-04:00

Hoping to start construction in early September. Much of the project will be DIY to add sweat equity, as well as keep the costs lower. To that end, we will be posting individual projects to the blog as they are undertaken to hopefully help others who are on a similar journal of a simpler, more peaceful existence.

A Clean, Simpler, Start...

2015-08-09T21:51:00.001-04:00

Chronic illness (especially when it takes 4 years to find someone to identify it and the identified illness has no cure) is expensive. Kristina and I bought in West Milford, WV nearly 15 years ago. We built a life for two young adults with full-time careers and college educations who'd some day start a family. We funded those educations (her Bachelor's and my Master's) on the implied promise of the 20th century that said degrees and our ambition would supply us with careers, good lives, and many decades to pay back student loans. Well, the universe had other plans for me...and by proxy my family. Best we've tried, with the gracious help from family, we can't maintain the life we established with me on the sidelines and now requiring regular trips to Baltimore for observation of my PLS. In addition, my illnesses give me hyper-acute senses making me not only in constant pain but also phono and photosensitive. Life around close neighbors literally hurts. I need some more space.

A change of course is gravely necessary. To that end, we are pairing down, simplifying, packing up, and selling to build a quaint off-grid cabin of our design on family property. I can't run at full steam anymore, but I am going to put as much of my blood and sweat equity (with the help of loving family & friends) into making my girls a mortgage free home with no public utilities, fees for town services we don't receive, et cetera. We need to sell our house after doing a few cosmetic fixes, but a move to a more rustic and peaceful setting is definitely happening.

We are trying to be as self-sufficient as possible but if anyone feels like giving a moving gift we have an Amazon wishlist of items we're likely going to be purchasing for our new homestead. Believe me, a lot of what we're doing will be DIY Rustic Cabin Chic. If a package arrives with our name on it, we'll find a use for it. I intend to repurpose my old blog and document every step of the process. Additionally, my PayPal account is FrederickBGerwig@gmail.com. There was a time that I thought it a failure to ask anything from anyone. Now, I realize that there are folks who want to help whenever they can.

Until we get a mailbox of our own: 163 Gerwig Dr, Exchange, WV 26619 will be the central command center for homestead construction.

Hi. Check out this list: https://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/2CDF6ST9QGKMC/ref=cm_sw_r_an_wl_o_lmaYvb6MATP8J

Still here...

2014-05-11T18:28:00.002-04:00

Just really terrible at keeping up with a Blog. Some day, perhaps.

Tossing Words: Year's End

2012-12-29T18:01:00.000-05:00

I have learned a lot this year. A lot about hope. A lot about pain. A lot about enjoying the simplest things that we seem to take for granted. I now know that I did not get well this summer. I did not beat Trigeminal Neuralgia with Persistent Headache this past summer...it was apparently just on vacation. It has now returned home; for over 2 months now. I must just deal with it.
I have learned much about business, and how difficult it is. How something like making partnerships with the wrong Domain Hosts, or distributors, can lead to a constant headache in a metaphorical state. It is now also known that the only way we can learn that partnerships are bad is by making them...and then liberating yourself from them.
Lastly, I learned that sometimes leaps of faith can pay off. Franklin over at Bloggermint.com was that leap of faith this past weekend, and it paid off. If you need someone to help you with coding on your Blog...he is the guy to contact. He helped me go out on my own and create my own webstore this weekend instead of relying on poor customer service and limited options at my old Domain/Store Host. Really went above and beyond, and it is appreciated. My store is now working fine, and I am beholden to my old (lame) shop provider no more. Freedom feels nice, unless it goes wrong, then it's just nail-biting. After a few hiccups (user error on my end) the Blogger store template that I got from Franklin is working great, and Cuppa's Coffee and More is up and running again with less overhead as I am not paying $20 a month to my old provider so that they can direct me to FAQs for every little (and BIG) site issue. Thanks Franklin. Though I have known you for a little more than 24 hours (and only as an online business aquaintance), you have done more for me to help my business in one day than others have done when I've paid them monthly for a year. For making the end of my year great, again I say thanks.

Seems Saying "Hello!" to Winter-like Weather Means Saying "Hello!" to Pain

2012-11-25T21:12:00.001-05:00

Time over, I had read and heard from fellow sufferers of Trigeminal Neuralgia that I would be lucky if it ever gave me a break in pain. Seems I was lucky from April 2012 until just recently. With the return of Fall months turning to cold winter-like chill, my pain has returned to a 7 or 8 from Nil. I am currently taking the treatments, or comparable ones, that I was when pain left me to enjoy the Spring and Summer. For some reason, however, with November and Thanksgiving...like some real life guests I suppose...pain and unilateral headache have both decided to return to me just in time for the holidays. So as before, this Blog (though neglected it has been for a few months whilst I was out enjoying all that is not behind a screen) will have life renewed as I again battle and document my time with Trigeminal Neuralgia and Unilateral Headache.

How my favorite hair product might have permanently changed my life...

2012-08-31T07:55:00.000-04:00

Am up early this morning pondering about vanity and its affect on one's health. 4 words: Paraben, everyday, ten years

I regularly think now of possible causes, things, that could make me go from normal 33-year-old guy last fall to the 34-year-old guy with the never ending headache and depleted endocrine system levels of last winter who didn't know if he'd ever be able to work again. That guy who had to take a month's leave of absence because some unknown force had knocked him on his hind end. We had found a treatment that made me feel human again, made me able to do things like walk outside without being absolutely and painfully blinded by sunlight. Able to even saw, and lift, and pound to build a backyard greenhouse. A way out of all of that without ever knowing what got me there to start with.

Choices and ponderings over the past 6 months have led me to change the course of my life this summer. Led me to analyze the things in life that are needed, that are wanted, and that make me happy. My concern for happiness, mainly fueled by the background fear that without knowing what obliterated my endocrine system to start with, that my newly refound energy and health could all slip away without warning. In some ways my returned feelings of vigor through treatment left me with a new found lease on life. One I can imagine that is not dissimilar to living under the shadow of a critical condition only to be told that you have now been cured...we just don't know what made you sick to begin with. And if I am honest, I have not ever been completely well over these past few months. The neverending headache has threatened to return several times throughout the late spring and summer. The nerves in my face occasionally tingle and pang and I have momentary bouts of extreme light sensitivity...just like the bad ole' days.

I Googled something yesterday which led to reading several health articles, that lead to reading a couple of medical studies, which led me to learn of three chemicals that have been banned in India, Japan, and banned from use in things like shampoo and hair products in Great Britain for their drastic and negative effects on on the human and mammalian endocrine system. Yet we still use it regularly in America despite the warnings of foreign studies due to one thing, it can keep our products shelf-worthy for months after being cheaply produced in a lab. One article, from a doctor, citing four medical studies said that if anything you use has methylparaben, propylparaben, or butylparaben in it...throw it immediately in the trash.

That warning, throw it in the trash if your product has even one of these chemicals in it, keeps ringing in my head. After a brief trip to the medicine cabinet I found one of the "parabens" in my deodorant, one in my shaving cream, and TWO in my favorite hair glue. I have used that same Hair Glue every day (sometimes multiple times a day) for the past ten years. What if the product that has given me my signature spiky 'do has caused all of this. Upon my last visit to the doctor, four months of hormone replacement therapy showed some improvement, but not as much as my doctor felt that it should have. I have used my favorite hair product, with both methyl and propyl paraben in it, every single day of my treatment.

So, I guess my year of changes continues. Last night I went through my bathroom products and threw away everything with parabens of any form in them. I was, thankfully, left with an all natural deodorant from Tom's of Maine and a far inferior pomade that "might" handle my crazy hair half as well as my paraben-ridden "Got2Be Glued". Feeling a bit better, though frustrated that my year of change (health, lifestyle, car, career) may have been caused by my own vanity. Yet, there are also multiple studies, showing that estrogen cannot be stripped from public water supplies through the normal processed used in US water treatment plants. Why do I suddenly shift to this in this post? Because paraben is a xeno-estrogen. It is a cheap, sythetic (some articles said "mutated"), lab created estrogen. While I have been rubbing it on my head every day for the past ten years in my favorite hair product, it doesn't explain why my doctor is now treating six men other than myself for this same condition in my small community. She is baffled and joked that she could get the Nobel Prize if only she could figure out my there is this sudden onset of this condition in my town when nine months ago I was the only one that she had ever seen in all her years of doctoring. I do not like where this line of questioning is leading me...not even sure how to get our water supply tested for it. Guess we take it one step at a time. I get my endocrine system levels tested again in late December of this year. I am going to make every effort to not use any products with parabens in them between now and then. Wonder if it will help?

Here is a link to one of the "Men's Health" style articles that led me to reading actually medical studies for part of my evening last night. This article is in no way particularly scholarly, but it was a spring board for an evening of reading studies on testing of parabens on rats, men in foreign countries, and health effects of male exposure to xeno-estrogens and other forms of estrogen in high doses: http://www.howtoincreasetestosterone.com/blog/730/men-is-your-shampoo-causing-low-testosterone/

2012-06-18T01:30:00.000-04:00

Rudeness and Tobacco Smoke at the local Dollar General....

2012-05-26T21:00:00.000-04:00

I shopped at the West Milford, WV Dollar General store today. When I got out of my car the employees (2 men) were standing outside, right at the front doors, smoking cigarettes. I said something to them about the smoking ban within 20 feet of a public entrance in Harrison County, WV where the store is located. They said they were aware. When I said that them smoking at the doors made me less likely to shop there, I was told that there were other stores I could shop at if their smoking bothered me. It is illegal, they were disrespectful, and I am likely not shopping there in the future. I mean, I live in the town where the store is located and it is our only "real" store aside from a small gas station and an ice cream shop. I like having a Dollar General in West Milford, but I do not feel that we should be subject to the airborne carcinogens of the employees every time we run in for milk or other sundries. We are niche clientele for that store. West Milford IS their business, and I have shopped there often. I am in disbelief that I would be told by the cashier (who was also outside taking a "buddy smoke" whilst on the clock) that I could drive to Jane Lew or Clarksburg if I wanted to shop at Dollar General since I didn't like their smoking at the doorway. That is a terrible business practice. There were customers in the store and the employees were all out front smoking, literally 5 feet from the doors, sitting in folding chairs that were out there on the sidewalk sale. There were racks of clothes outside too...all of that stuff is tainted with cigarette smoke now. I also posted commentary about this on my Twitter and Facebook statuses and have received comments from other residents of my town who have had similar experiences. Please do something to make our store friendlier to customers who abhor smoking. We should not be subjected to the rudeness or the cancer causing smoke when we try to pop in for groceries. Additionally, and possibly worse, we should not be chastised for pointing out offensive behaviors of employees who are blatantly breaking public health laws and employee codes of conduct. He should have apologized to me for offending a regular customer rather than telling me I could not shop there again.

Cuppa's Coffee & More

2012-05-01T21:34:00.001-04:00

Cuppa's Coffee & More

Update: The headache is mostly gone....

2012-04-22T02:38:00.000-04:00

It has been just over two weeks since I began my Androderm treatments. My headache is now completely gone on most days. I do still have to manage old triggers (flashing lights, fluorescent lighting, crowd noises, etc.), but overall my existence is much improved. My facial pain has decreased as well, but still sets in if I get really tired or have not eaten spicy foods enough that day. Capsaicin from hot peppers does still help my facial pain dramatically.

My new found "old self" has inspired me to take a new adventure. I have opened a web store called Cuppa's Coffee & More. It is located at http://www.CuppasCoffeeAndMore.com and even though I have not sold much yet I am feeling good about the adventure. Hopefully it will at least supplement my teaching income. If it does really well...who knows where my future may take me. Hopefully that future remains headache free as I continue to supplement my testosterone levels. ~Fred