Once upon a time when the Beard first came into posession of the red trailer (which coincided with me moving to Mainz and us moving in together) it looked like this. And I looked like that.

These are both views looking to the right and left of the door, which is located about in the middle of the trailer. And a side note to save my pride: we did not do the ceiling. Someone who couldn’t be bothered to actually fit the tongue and groove boards together did the ceiling, and it kind of makes me nuts. But that’s another story for another day.

When I finished fixing up my trailer (click here to read the whole story), I moved all of my stuff over to it, and the Beard and I basically lived as if we had seperate apartments across the street from each other. Each of us would come over to visit the other, but our stuff lived in separate places, and each person was the master of his, her own little space. But with Peanut on the horizon we rethought our housing strategy once again. We have painted and built and rearranged, things are nearing completion, and we’re both falling into a new spatial routine.

Trash house (aka my trailer) will be our kitchen, my office space, and (since I am leaving the bed in place so that we can continue to sleep separately when one of us is sick or working late) guest space/extra sleeping space. Since I already use it for all of these things, not much will be changing there.

The red trailer will be our main living space: bedroom and living room and hole-up-here-for-the-winter room, and that’s where the bulk of the rennovation projects have been taking place.

We (and by we, I mean the Beard as he’s done most of the work this time around) started with a fresh coat of paint: purple on the one side and yellow on the other to create a feeling of having two rooms. To further the feeling of two-roomness, I built a floor-to-ceiling cabinet that acts as a partial wall dividing the sleeping area from the other half of the trailer. My logic in this had to do with creating storage space where there previously was none: by building the cabinet out into the room, we gained as storage space a part of the trailer that had only been available for walking through before.

The cabinet isn’t quite finished (still needs doors), but as I know it’ll take me a while to get around to cutting and attaching them, I thought I’d share the photos from the project today. You’ll also notice that we’ve moved the bed to the other side of the trailer (these photos face the same side of the trailer as is pictured in the second photo above). The bed will be further away from the wood stove (con), but it will soon be big enough to sleep the three of us comfortably (pro pro PRO, I love me some wide open spaces when I’m sleeping).

My inspiration for the new cabinet were the built in cabinets in my own trailer (I love whoever built these and put them in because they were capable of an exactness in building that I have yet to master). Here’s a look at them:

building a new cabinet

Whenever I build something, I spend a long, long time sitting in front of the project space and imagining what it will look like, what problems I will encounter, and how to go about handling each step of the building process. So, step one looked like me staring into space for a long time. And step two looked like this (the long beams I bought, but all the short beams were leftovers from the building supply store dumpster dive we did several years ago):

And oh! isn’t that a lovely color for a sleeping room? I think so.

Once the frame for the cabinet was in place I sided it with tongue and groove boards:

And today it looks like this:

Someday it will have doors, and someday the whole thing will be painted, but for now, we’re both happy to have a place for our clothes and a tv to live (the tv being our latest scavenge—before we were using the Beard’s ancient computer to watch rented movies, and let me tell you it was a huge pain in the ass). And I will be happy when I’ve attached the doors that will enable us to ignore the chaos that will inevitably dwell behind them.

Next week: the “podest” aka stage aka raised platform that the Beard built on the other side of the trailer to increase storage space and keep our feet warm in the winter.

This post was a part of Motivate Me Monday at Keep It Simple, Just Something I Whipped Up at The Girl Creative, Made by You Mondays at Skip to My Lou, Anti-Procrastination Tuesday at New Nostalgia, Show and Share at Just a Girl, Fresh Friday at Release Me Creations, Frugal Friday at the Shabby Nest, and Frugalicious Friday at Finding Fabulous.

I listen to Rumo by Walter Moers as I wash the dishes, and I remember. I remember buying a one-way ticket to Frankfurt, Germany. I remember that Frau Cole* met me at baggage claim in a long skirt and that I, befuddled by the change of time and place, didn’t even flinch when she introduced me to the family’s driver. I remember buying a copy of Faust at the bookstore between the Zeil and the River Main to indulge my fantasies of reading it in the original (it is still sitting on my to-read shelf). And I remember asking the Cole’s oldest son to recommend a good German science fiction or fantasy book for me to try reading. He gave me Rumo.

I read the first couple of pages. With a dictionary. Over the course of several weeks. Six years later (my six year anniversary in Germany was yesterday), and Walter Moers is one of my favorite authors. I have read all five of the books he has written about the fictional continent Zamonien at least once, and listened to them many times more. Listening to the first chapter of Rumo—the same chapter that I struggled with and ultimately gave up on six years ago—is a water mark of how far I’ve come. When I arrived I would have said (and did say) that I could speak German. And I could. But the more you know, the more you realize that you don’t.

When a friend tells you “You’ve changed,” it tends to be with a note of accusation, as if to change is to become worse. Though it sometimes can be (generally a matter of perspective), I tend to think of it as positive and thrive on it. And there is an easy way to tell the difference between the good changes and the bad ones. When a change feels false, like a betrayal of that ephemeral thing we call our “self,” it is probably a negative thing. But when it feels like a journey that takes you closer and closer to living as that “self,” it is positive, an evolution, a boon. In the Dictionary of Gorilla to change is to learn and to grow and to find fulfillment, however temporary.

There is also a brand of change that I wouldn’t categorize either way—situational changes as generally irrelevant as a change of clothes, circumstancial things that one grows accustomed to and internalizes. And the last six years have had their share of both. Changes in taste, in outlook, in habit, in lifestyle, in friendships, in habit, and in behavior. I am more outspoken, yet more reserved in talking to strangers. I have let the cultural mores that I liked rub off on me, and the rest I gaze at in wonder, glad that I can still look around this place and find something that feels as new and different as it did on the day I arrived.

*Name changed to protect the guilty, of course. You can read more about the Cole’s and my adventures au pairing for their five-year-old twins by clicking here.

**Nope, those stars aren’t attached to anything in the text. But I wanted to tell you a little more about Rumo. Rumo is a book about a dude (he’s actually this crazy breed of walking, talking, badass-fighting dog that lives in Zamonien, but that is really besides the point) who starts his life a kidnappee of cyclopses who only eat creatures that are still alive, escapes, falls in love, and has a lot of adventures in the above and underworlds. Though I hesitate to call it “fantasy”—Moers books simply feel too all-encompassing to be reduced to just one genre—if you like fantasy, you’ll probably like Rumo. (Or adventure, or romance, or or or.) There are fantastical creatures, but it isn’t about a bunch of dudes with swords. There are trolls, but there aren’t any elves. And there are a lot of dark, deeply disturbing adventures. In short, it’s fantastic. I’ve also written about my all-time favorite Walter Moers book, The City of Dreaming Books, here.

When I think of dumpster dived shoes, I think of something I once heard someone say about life in Germany after World War II. “We always had to wear used shoes,” she said. “There wasn’t anything else. And they always gave us foot problems because they would be worn in funny.” Today she refuses anything but brand new footwear. Understandably.

Luckily the shoes to be had in the dumpster aren’t always used. Although I have found my fair share that were used lightly enough so as not to cause a funky step—fashion trends inspire most folks to toss their footwear long before their print has been stamped into the sole—the first bit of today’s dumpster find is this untouched pair of boots. Says T: “These are brand new boots my friend found for me. They came with a tag saying they’re Intermediate Cold Wet Boots and instructing me not to become a Cold Weather Casualty!” Which is a good thing, seeing as T lives in a really fucking cold part of the world.

A few weeks later, she sent me another picture: this time an entire boat-full of goods harvested from the trash.

The inventory, all taken from the same dumpster: 3 bicycles (not pictured), 1 bike trailer for moose hunting (which T says she paid for, but “foundby wandering around the dumpster asking people”), 4 folding doors (soon to be a desk and shelves), canning lids (new in boxes), 3 sets of sheets, beautiful flower painted tin tray, basket, and ceramic crocks for pickling. Hot damn.

If you want to read more about T’s life in her little cabin in the woods (she writes about rewilding, living in the woods, magic, and sex work, among other things), then skip over to Eco Whore and take a look.

Watch enough science fiction movies and you’ll become too practiced in the suspension of disbelief to accept anything you see on a screen as part of reality. So the fact that we have seen the Peanut on screen doing backflips in his/her little water cave hasn’t managed to make being pregnant any more concrete. Sure, my belly is growing; sure, I spent three and a half months puking daily. But it remains too surreal to really fathom. Though I’m sure giving birth will probably clear up most of the surreality, it is possible that I will never really wrap my head around it, even when the Peanut is 18 and standing right next to me. Sometimes I can’t even fathom that I have hands or eyes or lungs—it all (our bodies, life, etc) just seems so beautifully, magically, perfectly improbable.

Making a kid. It feels impossible, like a miracle. It is strange and fascinating and exciting and insane. And yet it is the most common of events. Every single person you know was once an unfathomable bump on someone’s belly, and if you start to pay attention, you’ll notice that there are pregnant women everywhere.

The excitment, the surreality, and the sheer impossibility of the event lend themselves to smugness, to a feeling of having accomplished something. And yet what have you really accomplished? You’re a human, doing what humans do. Your pipes happen to function (which is always worth being thankful for if you want children), and you now have proof that you’ve gotten laid at least once in your life. This baby will be one of the biggest events of your existence, but its creation will only ever matter as much to a small handful of others. Like cooking it belongs in the realm of everyday magic: beautiful, sacred, life-giving, banal, everday, and completely, utterly normal.

Photo: Click Clack Gorilla at 15 weeks round, Peanut at 13. Please note the gorgeous sage plant that I have raised from seed in the background.

The question has come up more often than I expected since we told the world about Peanut’s arrival in my stomach. Are you going to stay at the Wagenplatz? our apartment-dwelling friends want to know. But besides the noise from concerts and parties in the house at the front of the property, I can’t imagine a better place to raise a child. It’s the “it takes a village” principle in living color. There’s space to play outdoors. There are seventeen different people to talk to and learn from. It’s not any smaller than most of the apartments I’ve lived in. And we have a hell of a lot more money then we would if we had to pay a normal rent. I can’t think of a single reason to leave, no longer being attached to the luxury of having running water within arm’s reach at all times.

And this, I am proud to announce, may be our future Kinderwagen:

We hadn’t started looking for a Kinderwagen for the Peanut when we heard that one of our Platz-mates was planning on moving out and on next summer. The Plan is to house the three of us in the red trailer for Peanut’s first months, so the potential wait is negligible. Assuming that all goes well on her side and ours, the Wagen you see pictured above is the future home of Peanut Stewart come summer 2012.

It will also be, I can only assume, the future subject of many a rennovation blog. It’s in good condition (five meters long, metal siding, leaky roof with a not-leaky pond tarp covering it), but the walls are not insulated. And it is incredibly convenient. It’s already here, and we’re already lined up like three ducks in a row: trash house (my trailer and our future kitchen, my office, and guest space), the red wagon (future bed- and living room), and the Kinderwagen—strategically (luckily) placed the furthest from the noise of the house venue that has destroyed many a night of otherwise peaceful sleep.