Living Large In Our Little House

On occa­sion, some­one will ask me if I ever get claus­tro­pho­bic in Our Little House.

Most of the time, I don’t, but some­times, like any­one, I need to get away.

It’s been an espe­cially rough cou­ple of weeks with all of the ill­ness and try­ing to stay on top of work around the house and the work I do to make money.

The truth is, that no mat­ter what size of a house we live in, we all need a lit­tle break now and again.

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Kevin Pieper's Book, "Connecting with Nature"

Dale and I both are on the mend. Thank good­ness for mod­ern day antibi­otics that help kick infec­tions a lit­tle too ornery for our immune sys­tems to han­dle on their own.  Thank you, dear Living Large com­mu­nity, for the well wishes.

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One of the rea­sons we moved to this beau­ti­ful par­adise was to enjoy the nat­ural beauty of the Ozark Mountains. Of course, we do that as often as we can, but when we can­not, we have the won­der­ful pho­tog­ra­phy of a famous Ozarks pho­tog­ra­pher, Tim Ernst to enjoy.

Now, how­ever, we also have a won­der­ful book of pho­tog­ra­phy by Kevin Pieper to enjoy as well. Kevin is the local pho­tog­ra­pher Mother Earth News hired to pho­to­graph Our Little House for the story I wrote for them last year.

On Saturday, we had to get out and do some errands, so we stopped by a book retailer where Kevin was host­ing a book sign­ing. Kevin is one of the pho­tog­ra­phers I highly admire and I only wish my nature pho­tog­ra­phy was as beau­ti­ful as his.

While his pho­tos use no words, like every good pho­tog­ra­pher I know, his pho­tos tell a story just the same.

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Alas, the bug got me. I was up all night between Tuesday and Wednesday with a sore throat.  I lost my voice on Wednesday.

It's very frus­trat­ing for me to be ill. I feel it a waste of pre­cious time. I did what had to be done on Wednesday, but didn't fight it if I needed a break.

Of course, I don't know if the germs were air­borne or if dis­in­fect­ing with vine­gar just didn't work.

Dale should be on the mend soon. He came home Wednesday night from the doctor's office with three pre­scrip­tions. He waited so long to see the doc­tor, the infec­tion from his chest had even moved into his eye.

We're quite the pair. He can't see out of one eye and nei­ther one of us can talk.

Thanks for stop­ping in. I will be back as soon as I find that darned voice…what could have hap­pened to it!?

It’s amaz­ing to me how many new things keep crop­ping up about liv­ing in a small space, even now 3 years after our move.

Dale and I aren’t sus­cep­ti­ble to a lot of viruses, so aside from a cou­ple of small colds, we really haven’t had to deal with many germs.

That is, until this past week.

Dale’s luck ran out and he has been very ill with what­ever crud is going around town. Bad cold or flu, we’re not sure.

Living with some­one who is con­ta­gious is chal­leng­ing for any­one, but the germs are almost impos­si­ble to escape in close quarters.

A week ago Sunday night, when he started snif­fling, I asked, “Are you get­ting a cold?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

I’m not sure why men don’t know that tin­gling feel­ing in the back of the throat, that most women I’ve talked to asso­ciates with a cold, but I wasn’t tak­ing any chances.

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