Avery Unlimited

Having finally finished the www.averyltd.com front page for this website, here I am again. Thanks Wendy, and especially ‘mom Julie’, for taking a moment to comment! My first!

It’s been pretty exciting around here. Normally, we live quietly with almost no one here for days on end. Out here there’s no one to be here. We are surrounded by cow pastures (beef cows - the dairy farm is the next pasture over) and acres of pine trees, harvested for pulp every 20 years or so. One neighbor a half mile one way, the next a mile the other. Our dogs (10), cats (more or less 10) and horses (2) are plenty of company. And that’s how we like it.

But for the past 10 days or so, we have have some fellows here building a shop that will become the home of Audela, Geoff’s new endeavor to create beautiful things from our gorgeous cypress and antique lumber. First, before Christmas, we had the site cleared and the slab poured. Then, about that time, the building arrived from Pennsylvania. Of course, the usual kerfaufles ensued. The truck was late so the neighbors with the forklift had to come back and unload in the dark.

The guys assembling the shop have been great. Unlike most of the people here, who constantly ask for work but do none, they show up and get the job done. It’s a quonset type steel building that is assembled in sections, then each is raised and bolted to the next. On Wednesday, the table saw and other very special equipment Geoff ordered arrived but the ‘turkey’ truck driver had allowed Walmart to load the whole back of the truck with pallets of returned merchandise. There was no way to get to Geoff’s pallets so the driver had to go all the way back to New Orleans (90 miles) to unload, then come back the next morning with only our load. His boss was pissed, a lost day costs money, in addition to the $60 he reimbursed us for the people we had here to unload. Thursday, no help was available so Geoff and I did it with Bingo, our “new” little Bobcat. It was the first time we used it for anything so heavy, but aside from attaching the forks, which was a little awkward, all went well, and Geoff was (and still is) in 7th heaven with all his new gear and building.

Between a big Angus bull getting loose twice in the yard, shopping (an hour round trip to the nearest town), working on sales and cooking/cleaning, it’s amazing that I also managed to do a little yard work clearing brush where I cleared it a few years ago, but it (and so much more) has regrown since Katrina - we are still cleaning up.

Of course, it’s raining today, so no one here. Just quiet, wet, cold and damp so a day under the electric blanket with my laptop, writing HTML for Averyltd.

Time to feed the horses.

Welcome. The rain has stopped and a peaceful quiet pervades this old house.  When it rains, the drops pound the tin roof with a staccato beat, echoing through these old log walls, remembering so many past heartbeats heard here. Sometimes wild and unsettling, like those of Katrina howling, or peace filled, as now, with the rain just past.

 In between the raindrops, life goes on. The trivial, the trials, the trite, the tremendous. There are no answers, just questions, observations and opinions. Daily life, world concerns, and a hoped for existential undercurrent that reflects our own emphemeral presence among an infinity of heartbeats.

 Just live every day, every heartbeat matters. Live now.